Parent-adolescent interaction quality and adolescent affect

Bülow, van Roekel, Boele, Denissen, & Keijsers (2022) published “Parent-adolescent interaction quality and adolescent affect – An experience sampling study on effect heterogeneity” in Child Development. I like the study because they examined a total of 2281 interactions of 124 teens (12-18 with an average age 15 years) and their parents, assessing warmth and conflict in the interactions and positive and negative affect in the teens five or six times daily for two weeks.

Using dynamic systems theory, they emphasize the value of examining the “micro process of parenting” using the experience sampling method (ESM) which is sometimes called ecological momentary assessment. I like the methodology and the fact that they looked carefully at individual differences between families, finding, for example, that some adolescents who reported positive affect at one point, later in the day reported high conflict. They suggest that some teens, when in a good mood, do things their parents disapprove of. They also make it clear that parent interactions have differential effects on their teens.

They used a convenience sample and a questionnaire to secure demographics and information about parenting and well-being at baseline. Participants were notified on their smartphones five times per day on school days and twice daily on weekends. They asked initial items, then whether the teen participants had seen their parents in the previous hour. “The items were sampled and reformulated for ESM from the Positive Parent Involvement Scale for Children (YES I AM Scale; Repetti, 1996; Robles et al., 2016).” They used the short version of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule for Children (PANAS-C; Ebesutani et al., 2012) to assess affect and a 10-item Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale Second Edition (RADS-2 Reynolds, 2005). Their items are provided in an appendix. Here is an edited summary of their findings:

Warmth was associated with more positive affect and with less negative affect, while conflict was associated with less positive affect and with more negative affect. 

In families with higher average levels of warmth, adolescents experienced more positive and less negative affect on average, and a higher level of conflict compared to other families was associated with less positive and more negative affect. Therefore, between-family associations between warmth and affect and between-family associations between conflict and affect were confirmed.

Finally, we hypothesized effect heterogeneity, that is, we expected between-family differences in within-family concurrent and lagged effects. Adolescents who, for example, experienced stronger increases in positive affect during a warmer interaction, compared to other adolescents, also experienced stronger increases of positive affect 3 h after a warm interaction. . . . . Adolescents who showed stronger increases in positive affect after a warm interaction, compared to other adolescents, also showed stronger increases in negative affect after a conflict interaction.

We further explored if the strength of the within-family associations depended on characteristics of adolescents, namely adolescent gender, age, and adolescent depressive symptoms. There were no differences between boys and girls in the effect of interaction quality to concurrent and subsequent affect. Older adolescents, compared to younger adolescents, experienced a stronger increase in positive affect while having a warm interaction and stronger decrease in negative affect after having had a conflict. Adolescents with more depressive symptoms, compared to adolescents with fewer depressive symptoms, showed stronger effects between interaction quality and subsequent affect: They experienced a stronger increase in positive affect and stronger drop in negative affect after a warm interaction with their primary caregiver.

As expected, there were substantial differences between families in these associations. In some families the interaction quality was strongly associated with adolescents’ affect, in other families the link was weak or non-existent. When comparing families to each other (i.e., between-family associations), adolescents who reported on average higher positive and lower negative affect than their peers experienced their interactions with parents as warmer and less conflictual.

However, our results suggest that the immediate effect of one interaction might be short-lived and may vanish before the end of the day. Sensitivity analysis revealed that warmth significantly predicted negative affect 3 h but not 6 h later. 

Our family-specific approach detected substantial differences between families in their associations between interaction quality and affect, which is in line with prior daily-diary research (e.g., Janssen et al., 2020). For example, the effect of warmth on adolescent positive affect 3 h later was ranging from strong positive (β = .97) to strong negative effects (β = −.63). Whereas, many families (43%) had no effect, 38% had the hypothesized positive association. However, 19% of our participants had a negative association. 

To get a first understanding of possible reasons why the association between interaction quality and affect differed between families, we also examined associations between different models and possible moderators. Adolescents who had stronger associations between warmth and affect also had stronger associations between conflict and affect. This possibly indicates that some adolescents are generally more susceptible toward parenting effects than others, both for better and for worse. Exploring possible moderators makes us cautiously conclude that older adolescents and adolescents with more depressive symptoms are the ones whose own affect is more susceptible for influences of the interaction quality with their parents.