Exploring Processes in Day‐to‐Day Parent–Adolescent Conflict and Angry Mood: Evidence for Circular Causality

Abstract

Parent-adolescent conflict has been studied both as a precursor of long-term macrolevel developmental risks and as an outcome of microlevel, moment-to-moment interaction patterns. However, the family-level processes underlying the maintenance or regulation of conflict in daily life are largely overlooked. A meso-level understanding of parent-adolescent conflict offers important practical insights that have direct implications for interventions. The present study explores day-today reciprocal processes and carryover in parents' and adolescents' experiences of anger and conflict. Daily diary data provided by parent-adolescent dyads (N = 151) from two-caregiver households (adolescents: 61.59% female, mean age = 14.60 years) over 21 days were examined using a multivariate Poisson multilevel model to evaluate the circular causality principle in parents' and adolescents' daily conflict and anger. Findings offer empirical support for the theory, suggesting that parents' and adolescents' anger and conflict exist together in a feedback loop wherein conflict is both a consequence of past anger and also an antecedent of future anger, both within and across persons. Increased understanding of the daily interaction patterns and maintenance of parent-adolescent conflict can guide more informed, targeted, and well-timed interventions intended to ameliorate the consequences of problematic parent-adolescent conflict sequences.

Parent-adolescent interaction quality and adolescent affect - an experience sampling study on effect heterogeneity

“…Sensitivity analysis revealed that warmth significantly predicted negative affect three but not six hours later. This is in line with daily diary studies, which show inconsistent effects of interaction quality on next-day adolescent well-being (e.g., Boele et al, 2021;LoBraico et al, 2019;Timmons & Margolin, 2015). This highlights the added value of studying interaction quality at several moments within the day, by employing ESM to capture these micro processes.…”

“…However, findings are inconsistent whether parent-adolescent conflict and parental warmth can also predict next day's affect (e.g. Boele et al, 2021;LoBraico et al, 2019;Timmons & Margolin, 2015). Some studies showed substantial effect heterogeneity between families in how interaction quality and adolescent well-being were linked (Borghuis et al, 2020;Chung et al, 2009Chung et al, , 2011Janssen et al, 2020;Timmons & Margolin, 2015).…”

“…Analyzing parents-reports could possibly lead to different patterns (LoBraico et al, 2019). It is thus an open question to what extent interaction-quality actually fluctuates between interactions and to what extent only adolescents' perception changes from moment to moment.…”

Relationships of adolescents with suicidal behavior with social support networks

“…The repercussions of interventions and decisions that concern the adolescents make them feel protected and safe in the family context. At this point, they feel understood by their family support network and understand and accept guidance for them to deal with their behaviors, ideas, feelings and are encouraged to make decisions to face life situations (8,10) . Some adolescents mentioned that having a good relationship with their mothers and/or families was a supportive and protective factor against depression and suicide.…”

Parent‐Adolescent Emotion Dynamics at Multiple Time Scales

“…Current research questions of interest regarding Paths C1 and C2 include the following: (a) How are daily parent‐adolescent emotion dynamics associated with the emergence of longer term patterns? Multivariate multilevel models can be used to examine circular causality with these types of data (e.g., LoBraico, Brinberg, Ram, & Fosco, 2019). (b) How is in‐the‐moment interpersonal emotion regulation, such as responses to each other's emotions, associated with long‐term changes in psychosocial adjustment?…”