“Hey mom, guess what?”: Affective benefits of parental engagement with adolescent positive daily life experiences

• In Event: Timescales in the Study of Social Relationships: From Getting to Know You to Strengthening Bonds

Abstract

Adolescent development is characterized by normative changes in the experience of positive affect (PA). These normative changes may render adolescent PA particularly sensitive to environmental influences, with implications for PA functioning and associated functional outcomes including social functioning, health, and psychopathology across the lifespan. Parents have been found to be potent socializers of emotional experience during adolescence (Morris et al., 2017), and, on a macro-longitudinal timescale, PA and positive parent-adolescent relationship quality demonstrate mutually reinforcing growth across development (Griffith et al., 2019), consistent with theorized “upward spirals” of PA and positive relationships across the lifespan (Ramsey & Gentzler, 2015). Specific interactional mechanisms supporting such upward spirals, however, remain unclear. Interpersonal capitalization, or the process of sharing positive news with others, facilitates upward spirals of PA and social connectedness in romantic couples (Peters et al., 2018) and may represent one mechanism by which PA is socialized and reinforced in parent-adolescent dyads. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the ways in which interpersonal capitalization, as it occurs in everyday, natural settings, is related to proximal changes in parent and adolescent momentary experiences of PA.

Participants included 146 adolescents (52.1% girls; age 10-14, M[SD]=12.71[0.86]) and a participating caregiver (N=139; 78.7% mothers). A novel smartphone-based experience sampling method (ESM) design was implemented to assess both parent and adolescent momentary affect and patterns of engagement with adolescent PA in daily life settings (31 surveys across 9 days). On each survey, adolescents reported on their most positive experience within the preceding hour, including information about whether they shared news of the experience with their parent (i.e., capitalization). Parental responses to youth capitalization attempts were measured using an ESM-adapted version of the Perceived Responses to Capitalization Attempts scale (Gable et al., 2004). Parents completed independent ESM surveys evaluating their momentary affect as well as their engagement with their youth’s most positive experience in the preceding hour. Multilevel models indicated that, after accounting for PA elicited by the event itself, the act of sharing positive events with parents predicted increases in adolescent high-arousal PA (happy, energized, enthusiastic; b=3.84, p<.001, d=.16) and decreases in low-arousal PA (calm, relaxed; b=-2.61, p=.03, d=-.09). Adolescent momentary PA was further enhanced following instances in which parents responded in positive, enthusiastic ways (b=0.09, p<.001, d=.16), with effects driven by increases in high-arousal PA, specifically (b=0.14, p<.001, d=.16; low-arousal PA n.s.). Parental momentary PA was also enhanced following instances in which they responded to their adolescent’s positive emotions in positive, enthusiastic ways (b=0.06, p<.01, d=.13), with effects similarly driven by increases in parental high-arousal PA, specifically (b=0.12, p<.001, d=.21; low-arousal PA n.s.). No effects of capitalization were observed for parent or adolescent momentary negative affect (ps>.05).

Together, results suggest that parental positive, active engagement with youth positive experiences confers affective benefits for both parents and adolescents, with specific implications for dyad members’ experience of high-arousal PA in daily settings. Findings support capitalization as one mechanism unfolding across hours and days to facilitate iterative, macro-longitudinal gains in parent-adolescent relationship quality over months and years.

Authors

• Julianne Griffith, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author

• Benjamin Hankin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Non-Presenting Author