NCJ Number
205668
Journal
Journal of Youth and Adolescence Volume: 33 Issue: 3 Dated: June 2004 Pages: 187-200
Date Published
June 2004
Length
14 pages
Annotation
This study examined the extent to which individuals exposed to frequent and intense conflict between their parents (IPC) across childhood and adolescence are sensitized to conflict during late adolescence.
Abstract
A total of 189 (100 females and 89 males) college undergraduate students enrolled in a psychology course participated in the study. Thirty-one percent of the participants were from divorced families, and 69 percent were from intact families. Most participants (87 percent) were not living with their parents at the time of the study. Participants completed a series of questionnaires and responded to two simulated conflicts by listening to two 1-minute audiotaped conflicts in one laboratory session. After listening to each interaction, participants answered questions about their negative emotional reactions to the conflict. Participants were also asked about the level of security the couple was expected to feel in their relationship following the conflict and the level of satisfaction the couple on the tape was expected to feel with their relationship following the interaction. To assess dispositional emotional functioning, participants completed measures that pertain to frequency and intensity of negative emotions, attentional shifting and focusing, and emotional control. To examine the interactive effects of IPC, emotional functioning, gender, and conflict type (i.e., destructive/constructive), separate regression analyses were conducted for distressful, sad, and angry reactions to the simulated conflict. Despite zero-order correlations that indicated reported IPC exposure was not significantly related to late adolescents' negative emotional reactions and negative beliefs about simulated conflict, regression analyses indicated that the effects of IPC exposure were moderated by individual differences in emotional functioning and by gender. Higher levels of perceived IPC were associated with more intense negative emotional reactions for low to moderate emotionally functioning individuals, but not for late adolescents higher in emotional functioning. The findings suggest that following exposure to high levels of IPC while growing up, adolescent females may be particularly sensitive to the impact of such quarrels, resulting in more negative beliefs about conflict implications than adolescent females from low-conflict homes. In contrast, if males primarily focus on their own emotional well-being when they witness others' conflicts, they may be likely to experience sensitization in the form of heightened distress when exposed to subsequent conflict. These findings, when combined with those of previous studies, suggest there will be individual differences in the effects of IPC exposure. 3 figures, 3 tables, and 61 references