An 11-year prospective study of personality X parenting interactions as predictors of self-efficacy in young adults: diathesis-stress or differential susceptibility?

Abstract

Background Self-efficacy, individuals’ beliefs regarding their capacities to perform actions or control (potentially stressful or novel) events, is thought to be important for various life domains. Little however is known about its early precursors. This study examined the predictive effects of childhood personality and parental behaviors (i.e., overreactive discipline and warmth) for general self-efficacy in young adulthood. Furthermore, it was examined whether personality and parenting behaviors interacted and whether these interactions supported the diathesis-stress or differential susceptibility model. These aims were examined in an 11-year prospective study of 336 participants (Mage at T1 = 10.83 years, range = 9–12 years, 53.9% girls). Personality and parental behaviors were reported at T1 by both mothers and fathers, whereas self-efficacy was self-reported at T2 11 years later. Hypotheses were tested in Mplus using multilevel structural equation modeling. Results Results revealed that (only) emotional stability, and not parenting, predicted higher self-efficacy 11 years later. Benevolence functioned as a susceptibility marker in the association between overreactivity and self-efficacy. Conclusions The results show that childhood emotional stability is an important long-term predictor of self-efficacy, even into emerging adulthood. Moreover, the integration of individual differences in models of parenting effects may further improve our understanding of early adults’ adjustment.

A person-centered approach to resilience and vulnerability in emerging adulthood: Predictions from parenting and personality in adolescence

“…With respect to Big Five personality traits, our results showed that emerging adults in the Competent profile were more emotionally stable during adolescence than those in the Vulnerable profile. This finding is in line with previous work suggesting that greater emotional stability in youth is related to a variety of positive outcomes in adulthood, including lower levels of internalizing and externalizing problems (e.g., Van Eldik et al, 2020) and higher levels of subjective well-being and self-efficacy (e.g., Anglim et al, 2020;Deutz et al, 2021;Gale et al, 2013). Even at low levels of stress, emotional stability seems to be an important individual trait acting as a promotive factor for positive outcomes.…”

“…Empirical findings indicate that children's personality traits can directly shape positive development. For example, higher levels of Big Five personality traits in childhood and adolescence have been related to positive outcomes in adulthood, such as higher subjective well-being (Anglim et al, 2020;Gale et al, 2013), self-efficacy (Deutz et al, 2021), and academic and social competence (Shiner & Masten, 2012) as well as lower internalizing and externalizing problems (Van Eldik et al, 2020). In person-centered analyses (Shiner & Masten, 2012), emerging adults characterized by resilience (high stress, good adaptation) showed higher childhood conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness, and emotional stability than those characterized by maladjustment (high stress, poor adaptation).…”

A DAE perspective on the interface between adaptive and maladaptive personality development: A conceptual replication

“…There are contrasting findings concerning causal dominance of the personality traits over social problems. On the one hand, neuroticism specifically has been found to be a genetically inheritable feature that underlies psychopathology (Hink et al, 2013;Kotov et al, 2010) and predicts several adaptive outcomes such as selfefficacy (Deutz et al, 2021). High levels of neuroticism and low levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness have been found to be a consistent correlate and risk factor in the development of antisocial or externalizing behaviors (Lynam et al, 2005;Miller et al, 2003;Ruiz et al, 2008;Van den Akker et al, 2010).…”