Date of Award

Summer 6-30-2020

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology (PhD)

Department

Clinical Psychology

First Advisor/Committee Member

Amy H Mezulis, Ph.D.

Second Advisor/Committee Member

Keyne C. Law, Ph.D.

Third Advisor/Committee Member

Sarah Crystal, Ph.D.

Abstract

Effective emotion regulation strategies are associated with adaptive outcomes in youth. While previous research has established parental socialization of emotion regulation as an important predictor of adaptive outcomes, the mechanisms by which parents contribute to young adolescents’ emotion regulation outcomes is poorly understood. The current study examined pathways between parenting style, parental socialization of emotion regulation practices, and adolescent negative affectivity to emotion regulation outcomes in adolescents cross-sectionally and prospectively over the course of a year. Participants were 150 young adolescents ages to 10 to 14 (Mage = 13.03, SDage = .90; 51.33% female) and their parent/legal guardian recruited from four middle schools in the Pacific Northwest. Contrary to hypotheses, robust path analyses conducted in Mplus examining the conditional indirect pathways of the cross-sectional moderated mediation path models predicting cognitive reappraisal (Model 1; bøX®MøM®Y = -1.26 [2.05], 95% CI [-5.28, 2.76], p = .54) and expressive suppression (Model 2; bøX®MøM®Y = -1.60 [1.29], 95% CI [-4.13, 0.92], p = .21), as well as the conditional indirect pathway of the prospective moderated mediation path model predicting cognitive reappraisal (Model 3; bøX®MøM®Y = 0.72 [1.91], 95% CI [-3.02, 4.47], p = .71), were nonsignificant. However, consistent with hypotheses, the conditional indirect pathway of the prospective moderated mediation path model predicting expressive suppression (Model 4; bøX®MøM®Y = 3.76 [1.87], 95% CI [0.10, 7.43], p = .04) was statistically significant, indicating that suppression at 12 months was significantly greater at higher levels of adolescent negative affectivity at baseline. Alternative models were evaluated for fit and associations among the variables post-hoc. Current results suggest limited support for the proposed causal pathways from parenting style to adolescent emotion regulation strategy use through socialization of emotion regulation.

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