Parental Psychological Control and Children\u27s Relational and Social Aggression

There are studies that found parental psychological control was related to children’s antisocial behavior (e.g., Kuppens, Grietens, Onghena, & Michiels, 2009; Soenes, Vansteenkiste, Goossens, Duriez, & Niemiec, 2008) and other psychological outcomes such as self-esteem and depressive symptoms (e.g., Costa, Soenens, Gugliandolo, Cuzzocrea, & Larcan, 2015; Inguglia et al., 2016; Kline, Killoren, & Alfaro, 2016); however, it is hard to find studies examining how all those variables are dynamically related. The current study aims to examine if parental psychological control during adolescence is related to children’ antisocial behaviors (e.g., social/relational aggression) during college as well as if this association is mediated by children’s social self-esteem and/or depressive symptoms. In addition to examining the dynamic among these variables, the current study is expected to contribute by examining the role of paternal psychological control as well as maternal psychological control. The majority of studies of parental psychological control and children’s outcomes only focus on maternal psychological control findings (e.g., Valdes, Laursen, guimond, Harti, & Denner, 2016). Also, the current study would fill the gap in the existing studies in the matter of ages of children. A number of studies of parental psychological control have mainly been conducted with relatively younger aged children; very few studies examine the development of college students related to parental psychological control (e.g., Kline, Killoren, & Alfaro, 2016). Methods & Results Four hundred two undergraduate college students in the south of the U.S. participated in the current study by completing a survey (female = 51% and male = 49%). They are mainly White (80.3%) and 91 percent were between 19 and 25 years of age (M = 22.01 years; SD = .2.65). Parental Psychological Control during Adolescence was created by calculating the mean of a total of 21 items (α = .95 for maternal/α = .91 for paternal). The example questions are “In general, my mother/father was less friendly with me, if I did not see things her way.” College Students’ Social Self-Esteem was measured with 8 items (α = .82). The example questions are: “I am easy to like.” College Students’ Depressive Symptoms were measured by calculating the mean of a total 20 items (α = .93). The example questions are: In the past week….“I could not shake off the blues.” Relationally/Socially Aggressive Behaviors were measured by 10 items (α = .79), such as “When I am frustrated with my partner/colleague/friend, I give that person the silent treatment.” Structural Equation Model was used to examine the mediation of social esteem and depressive symptoms between parental psychological control and children’s social/relational aggressive behaviors (see the Table 1 for descriptive statistics of the variables). As seen in Figure 1, there were indirect significant positive associations between maternal psychological control and antisocial behaviors via depressive symptoms; however, paternal psychological control was directly positively associated with antisocial behaviors as well as indirectly associated with antisocial behaviors via social esteem. More findings, interpretations, and limitations of the current study will be discussed at the conference