Parental Psychological Control: Revisiting a …wbeyers/scripties2011/artikels/...by way of explaining, expressing curiosity, and engaging in joint problem solving. On the other hand,

Parental Psychological Control: Revisiting aNeglected Construct

Brian K. BarberBrigham Young University

BARBER, BRIAN K. Parental Psychological Control: Revisiting a Neglected Construct. CHILD DE-VELOPMENT, 1996, 67, 3296-3319. This article argues for the value in socialization research offocusing explicitly on the construct of parental psychological control of children—control thatconstrains, invalidates, and manipulates children's psychological and emotional experience andexpression. The article traces the history ofthe construct and distinguishes psychological controltheoretically and empirically from more behaviorally oriented control. 2 new measures of psycho-logical control are developed. Data from 3 separate studies are presented which indicate thatpsychological control can be adequately measured across demographically varied samples andmode of measurement. In both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses, psychological control,particularly as perceived by preadolescents and adolescents, is consistently predictive of youthinternalized problems (depression) and, in some cases, externalized problems (delinquency). Incontrast, behavioral control is related primarily to externalized problems.

The research literature investigating the expression, emotions, and attachment to par-nature and effects of parental control of chil- ents). Behavioral control, in contrast, refersdren and adolescents is broad and complex. to parental behaviors that attempt to controlIt contains numerous different conceptual- or manage children's behavior. Wbile someizations of control, and findings are often in- forms of psycbological intervention by par-consistent or equivocal (see Barber, 1992; ents appear to be positive, as in the use ofBarber, Olsen, & Sbagle, 1994; Rollins & reasoning to encourage awareness and sensi-Thomas, 1979, for reviews). This literature tivity to consequences (see review by Gru-has benefited from attempts to provide some sec & Goodnow, 1994), psychological con-conceptual organization to parental control trol as a parenting dimension has almostof children, such as the distinction between exclusively been conceptualized as a nega-coercive, inductive, and undifferentiated tive form of control. This article maintainscontrol attempts (Rollins & Thomas, 1979) this position.and the two-fold classification of respon- .,., , u i • l i i

1 J J. ,-r, • J Although psychological control was m-siveness and demandmgness (Baumrind, l j j . ^ ^ -L . l. j. ^ l-mm \A u s »* _i- inoo\ cluded in some of the earliest conceptualiza-1991; Maccoby & Martin, 1983). .. r .. j j.- ^ u •• ' ' tions of parentmg and continues to be lm-Tbis article provides additional clarity plicit in mucb of tbe major work, focused

to the complex nature of parental control by attention to the construct has been lacking,extending work tbat distinguishes specifi- This article reviews the history of the coji-cally between psycbological control and be- struct, argues its viability tbeoretically, andhavioral control. Psychological control refers presents findings from three studies de-to control attempts that intrude into the psy- signed to (1) demonstrate that the constructchological and emotional development of can be measured accurately, (2) provide evi-tbe cbild (e.g., tbinking processes, self- dence for its salience to aspects of youth psy-

Data for Study 1 were collected in collaboration with the Section on Social and EmotionalDevelopment, National Institute of Ghild Health and Human Development. Appreciation isexpressed to the administrators, teachers, and families ofthe Knox County Department of PublicInstruction for participating in the study. Study 2 was supported by grants DA 05304 and DA07031 from the National Institute of Drug Abuse, U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) to theOregon Social Learning Center. Particular appreciation is expressed to Thomas J. Dishion forhis interest in and consultation on this work and for the time, data, and resources he madeavailable. Appreciation is also expressed to Cheryl Buehler, D. Russell Crane, Douglas L. Free-man, Stephen Gavazzi, Stuart T. Hauser, and LaNae Valentine for consultation on constructformation. Study 3 was supported by grant R29-MH47067-03 from the National Institute of Men-tal Health to Brian K. Barber. Appreciation is expressed to the administrators, teachers, andfamilies of the Odgen Utah Gounty School District for participating in this study. Appreciationis expressed to Xiaojia Ge for assistance with the longitudinal data analysis.

[Child Development, 1996,67,3296-3319. © 1996 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.All rights reserved. 0009-3920/96/6706-0034S01.00]

Brian K. Barber 3297

chological and social functioning, and (3)test hypotheses about its specialized associa-tions with youth internalized problems.Throughout the article, behavioral controland its effects are used as a point of contrastto illustrate the properties of psychologicalcontrol.

History of the PsychologicalControl Construct

Explicit attention to the construct ofpsychological control emerged in the 1960s,particularly in the work of Becker (1964) andSchaefer (1965a, 1965b). Becker (1964) drewfrom work by Allinsmith (1960) and MacKin-non (1938) in defining psychological disci-pline as parental behavior that, for example,appeals to pride and guilt, expresses disap-pointrtjejit, withdraws love, isolates thechild, and involves shaming. For thesescholars, psychological discipline was an ex-ample of negative, love-oriented discipline;discipline that involved the manipulation ofthe love relationship between tbe parentand the child as a means of controlling childbehavior. This negative, love-oriented disci-pline stood in contrast to positive, love-oriented discipline (i.e., praise and reason-ing) and to power assertive disciplinetechniques, such as physical punishment,yelling, forceful commands, and verbalthreats.

Schaefer's (1959, 1965a, 1965b) factoranalyses of child and parent report on hisChild Report of Parent Behavior Inventory(GRPBI) revealed three replicated factors:Acceptance versus Rejection, Firm Gontrolversus Lax Gontrol, and Psychological Au-tonomy versus Psychological Gontrol. Pa-rental behavior scales that primarily definedthis latter factor were Intrusiveness, Paren-tal Direction, and Gontrol through Guilt.Other scales with significant loadings on thisfactor (but also had cross-loadings on one ofthe other two factors) were Possessiveness,Protectiveness, Nagging, Negative Evalua-tion, Strictness, and Punishment. Schaefer(1965b, p. 555) labeled this factor Psycholog-ical Autonomy vs. Psychological Gontrol be-cause "the defining scales describe covert,psychological methods of controlling thechild's activities and behaviors that wouldnot permit the child to develop as an indi-vidual apart from the psirent."

These early efforts converged in theview that psychological control is a ratherinsidious type of control that potentially in-hibits or intrudes upon psychological devel-

opment through manipulation and exploi-tation of the parent-child bond (e.g.,love-withdrawal and guilt induction), nega-tive, affect-laden expressions and criticisms(e.g., disappointment and shame), and exces-sive personal control (e.g., possessiveness,protectiveness). Yet, the psychological con-trol construct received very little researchattention in the years following Becker's andSchaefer's work, and this despite Schluder-mann and Schludermann's (1970, personalcommunication, 1988) successive refine-ments ofthe GRPBI. Several major reviewsin subsequent decades (Maccoby & J. Mar-tin, 1983; B. Martin, 1975; Rollins &Thomas, 1979) either ignored the psycholog-ical control construct or mentioned it with-out elaboration or development, and tbeconstruct long was neglected in empiricalanalyses of the socialization process. Re-cently, however, Steinberg (Steinberg,1990; Steinberg, Elmen, & Mounts, 1989;Steinberg, Lamborn, Dornbusch, & Darling,1992; Steinberg, Mounts, Lamborn, & Dorn-busch, 1991) has consistently found psycho-logical control/autonomy to be distinct frombehavioral control and parental acceptance(as did Schaefer, 1965b), but to this point hehas aggregated these into typologies. Otherresearchers have begun to focus on the inde-pendent contributions of psychological con-trol to youth functioning (Barber, 1992; Bar-ber et al., 1994; Barber & Shagle, 1992;Fauber, Forehand, Thomas, & Wierson,1990).

Theoretical guidance for further re-search on this distinction comes from severalformulations of the idea that parents can in-trude upon the psychological and emotionaldevelopment oftheir children. Diana Baum-rind's (Baumrind, 1965, 1966, 1968, 1978)discussions of parental control consistentlyendorse parental styles that encourage thechild's expression of opinions, verbal giveand take between parents and children, andautonomous expression of cbildren's indi-viduality. Sbe also underscores the impor-tance of recognizing the child's individualinterests and affirming the child's qualities(Baumrind, 1978), and she warns specificallyagainst guilt-inducing techniques and themanipulation of the love relationship withthe child (Baumrind, 1966). In her recentanalyses of her subjects as adolescents, Bau-mrind (1991) labeled one ofthe four controlscales that emerged from cluster analyses In-trusive.

This work has not facilitated clear prog-ress in understanding the precise nature and

3298 Child Development

effects of psychological control, however,because of two limitations of the typologicalapproach to parenting. First, the authoritar-ian prototype has typically included botbpsychologically and nonpsychologically ori-ented forms of control. As will be discussedlater, the effects of these types of controlcould be quite different, a difference that isundetectable if both forms of control are ag-gregated. (This changed in the 1991 reportwhen high scores on the Intrusiveness vari-able were used to distinguisb authoritarian-directive from nonauthoritarian-directivefamilies. Thus, psychological control wasseparated from nonpsychological [assertive]control.) Second, despite this recent disag-gregation of psychological and nonpsycho-logical control, the authoritarian typologyhas always included elements of still otherdimensions of parenting, such as rejec-tion (Baumrind, 1967) and responsiveness(Baumrind, 1991). This combination alsoprecludes the identification of any uniqueeffects of the individual forms of parenting.

In a separate line of research, Hauserhas also emphasized parenting behaviorsthat are very consonant with psychologicalcontrol (Hauser, 1991; Hauser et al., 1984).For Hauser (building on Stierlin, 1974), mo-ment-to-moment exchanges between par-ents and children can either facilitate (en-able) or restrict (constrain) interactions thatare critical to the child's ego development.Enabling interactions enhance individualityby way of explaining, expressing curiosity,and engaging in joint problem solving. Onthe other hand, constraining interactionsthat, for example, devalue, judge, exces-sively gratify, distract, withhold, or show in-difference, interfere in the development ofindividuality (Hauser, 1991). Such interac-tions undermine a child's participation infamily interactions and discourage involve-ment with perceptions, ideas, and observa-tions (Hauser et al., 1984).

Support for the salience of the psycho-logical control construct is also available inclinical literatures. Depressed persons recalltheir parents to have been psychologicallycontrolling (e.g., overintrusive, guilt induc-ing, negatively evaluating, etc.; Burbach &Bourdin, 1986). Also, family members' open-ness to the ideas of others (permeability) andrespect for maintaining one's own beliefs(mutuality) are central in the work of Grote-vant and Gooper (1986). Similarly, familytherapist researchers have long been con-cerned with relationship patterns that are in-trusive and inhibit psychological autonomy.

Examples include undifferentiated andfused relationships (Bowen, 1978; Sabatelli& Mazor, 1985), enmeshed relationships(Minuchin, 1974), and closed and synchro-nous family paradigms, both of which deem-phasize the individuality of family membersin favor of the group (Gonstantine, 1986).

This present article extends recent at-tempts to validate the construct of psycho-logical control and advance understandingof its role in the socialization process (Bar-ber, 1992; Barber & Shagle, 1992; Barber etal., 1994). In theorizing about the role of psy-chological control in the socialization pro-cess it is useful to focus on two related is-sues: (1) if and how psychological controldiffers from other types of control and (2) ifand how it is related uniquely to aspectsof children's development. In addressingthe former, my approach, consistent withSteinberg's (1990) admonition, has been tocontrast psychological control witb behav-ioral control. Historically, this distinctionhas deep roots in the sociopolitical experi-ence of Western civilization. This is seenparticularly in the conflict between indi-vidualism—maximizing individual freedomand autonomy—and collectivism—the sub-mission to the general will of society (seePeterson, 1995, for a discussion). The para-dox has been equally recognized at the levelof individual personality and social compe-tence, with repeated distinctions betweenthe psychological (e.g., psychological/emo-tional autonomy) and behavioral (e.g., con-formity to rules and regulations) dimensionsof a child's experience. Baldwin (1948, p.131) wrote: "Socialization by definition de-mands the development of contradictory as-pects ofthe personality. Gonformity to cul-tural demands is not easily obtained withoutrobbing the child of that personal integritywhich gives him a mind of his own andwhich supports him in his attempts to satisfyhis curiosity and to carry out his ideas andphantasies in his dealing with the realworld." Similarly, Baumrind (1978, p. 248)spoke ofthe "eternal contradictions of socialliving" when contrasting the other-oriented/rule-following and autonomous/agentic as-pects of instrumental competence. Empiri-cally, Schaefer (1965b) made the same dis-tinction by separating psychological controlfrom firm control.

Distinguishing between psychologicaland behavioral control facilitates an impor-tant shift in understanding the nature of con-trol. The focus of much socialization re-search is the quantity of control that is


exercised over a child, with specific con-cerns over issues such as the absolute levelof control, critical thresholds of control, andthe linear versus curvilinear nature of con-trol (e.g.. Miller, McGoy, Olson, & Wallace,1986; Rollins & Thomas, 1979). Separatingpsychological control from behavioral con-trol emphasizes where the control is locatedor focused. Thus, the question is less one ofhow much control is good or bad for a childthan asking in what areas of a child's lifeis control facilitating or inhibiting. Referringspecifically to this distinction between psy-chological and behavioral control, Steinberg(1990, p. 274, n. 6) wrote: "Some readersmay find it inconsistent, or perhaps confus-ing, that the two forms of control [psycholog-ical and behavioral] appear to bave oppositeeffects on the adolescent. . . . Adolescentsappear to be adversely affected by psycho-logical control—the absence of 'psychologi-cal autonomy'—but positively infiuenced bybehavioral control—the presence of 'de-mandingness.'"

The paradox that Steinberg referredto—that control can be both inhibitive (psy-chological control) and facilitative (behav-ioral control) of human development—parallels the earlier posed distinctionbetween human tendencies toward both au-tonomy and conformity. In short, psycholog-ical control is different from behavioral con-trol because in each the control is focused ondifferent aspects ofthe child's development.Social science literatures are replete withreference to the need for regulation and con-formity, both at the theoretical (e.g., socialcontrol theories, Hirschi, 1969; Reckless,1967; Reiss, 1951) and empirical levels (e.g.,Patterson, 1982; Patterson & Stouthamer-Loeber, 1984). Far less attention, however,has been given to the need for personal au-tonomy and the role that control processesplay in inhibiting it.

The second issue is whether psycholog-ical control uniquely affects aspects of childfunctioning. For example, are bebavioraland psychological control differentially re-lated to existing distinctions (Achenbach,1985; Gicchetti & Toth, 1991) between inter-nalized behaviors (inhibited, overcontrolledproblems that are manifest privately or inter-nally) and externalized problems (undercon-trolled problems that tend to be more ag-gressive and socially disruptive)? I havefocused specifically on depression as a mea-sure of internalized problems and antisocialbehavior (as measured by standard delin-quency scales) as a index of externalized

problems. Existing literatures imply thatpsychological control should have particulareffects on internalized problems in childrenand that behavioral control should havemore prominent associations with external-ized problems. Psychologically controllingprocesses involve socialization pressure thatis nonresponsive to the child's emotionaland psychological needs (Maccoby & Mar-tin, 1983), that stifies independent expres-sion and autonomy (Baumrind, 1965, 1978;Hauser, 1991; Hauser et al., 1984), and thatdoes not encourage interaction with others(Baumrind, 1965, 1978; Hauser, 1991;Hauser et al., 1984). Such an environmentmakes it difficult for a child to develop ahealthy awareness and perception of self forseveral reasons: the implied derogation ofthe child, the lack of healthy interaction withothers that is required for adequate self-definition (Youniss & Smollar, 1985), limitedopportunities to develop a sense of personalefficacy (Seligman & Peterson, 1986), and,particularly for adolescents, interferencewith the exploration needed to establish astable identity (Erikson, 1968; Marcia,1980). Psychological control has consistentlybeen found to be correlated with patternsmarked by feelings of guilt, self-responsibility, confession, and indirect ornonexpression of aggression (see Becker,1964), dependency (Baumrind, 1978;Becker, 1964), alienation (Baumrind, 1968),social withdrawal (Baumrind, 1967; Baum-rind & Black, 1967), low ego strength(Hauser, 1991; Hauser et al., 1984;Siegelman, 1965), inability to make con-scious choice (Baumrind, 1966), low self-esteem (Goopersmith, 1967), passive, inhib-ited, and overcontrolled characteristics(Beavers, 1982), and depressed affect (Allen,Hauser, Eickholt, Bell, & O'Gonner, 1994;Barber et al., 1994; Burbach & Bourdin,1986; Fauber et al., 1990).

In contrast, behavioral control is moredirectly linked to externalized problems.Substantial research documents a consistentrelationship between insufficient behavioralcontrol and undercontrolled behavior prob-lems in children of all ages. Behaviors asso-ciated with inadequate behavioral reg-ulation include impulsivity, aggression,delinquency, drug use, and sexual precocity(Baumrind, 1971, 1991; Dishion & Loeber,1985; Dornbusch et al., 1985; Loeber & Di-shion, 1984; Maccoby & Martin, 1983;McGord, 1979, 1990; Miller et al., 1986; Ol-weus, 1980; Patterson, Gapaldi, & Bank,1989; Patterson & Stouthamer-Loeber, 1984;Pulkinnen, 1982; Volk, Edwards, Lewis, &


Sprenkle, 1989). Under-controlled environ-ments do not foster self-regulation in chil-dren, often leaving them more impulsive,reckless, and more willing to take risks andviolate social norms. In unregulating familyenvironments, adolescents in particular alsowould be likely to be more responsive andsusceptible to peer infiuence, wbich couldinclude negative infiuence toward deviantbehavior. Finally, it would also be possiblethat some unregulated adolescents inten-tionally "misbehave" in order to define forthemselves the limits of acceptable be-havior.

Initial empirical tests of these ideashave been encouraging (Barber et al., 1994).Second-order factor analysis of several mea-sures of control—measured at both the dy-adic, parent-child level and the family sys-tems level—distinguished psychologicalcontrol from bebavioral control, and the con-trasting effects of these on internalized (de-pression) and externalized (delinquency)problems among pre-, early, and mid-adolescents were confirmed. Among the lim-itations of that study were the concentrationon middle-income, white families and lim-ited measures ofthe criterion variables.

The purpose of this article is to presentresults from three separate studies involvinga variety of samples to test the measurementproperties of psychological control and to ex-plore its associations (compared to behav-ioral control) with adolescent problem be-baviors. Particular emphasis is given to thetheorized specialized association with inter-nalized problems.

Study 1

MethodSubjects.—Data for this study came

from the Tennessee Adolescents in FamiliesProject (TAIFS), a 1990 school-based surveystudy of' 875 fiftb-, eighth-, and tenth-gradestudents from 14 schools in the KnoxGounty, Tennessee, school system. Thesample included 581 middle-income stu-dents and 221 low-income students. Incomestatus was classified according to participa-tion in subsidized lunch programs as re-ported by school officials. For the purposesof this study, students paying for lunch wereconsidered middle income and students re-ceiving reduced costs for lunch or free lunchwere considered low income. Twenty-sixpercent of low-income students reported liv-ing with both parents; 46% reported livingwith mother only. Sixty-four percent of mid-

dle-income families reported living withboth parents; 13% reported living withmother only. The middle-income samplewas 90% white {N = 523) and 10% black{N = 58). The low-income sample was 42%{N = 93) white and 58% {N = 128) black.The sample was roughly equally distributedby sex and grade level. Ninety percent ofyouth reported themselves to be Baptist. Asurvey on many aspects of family interactionand youth behavior were administered inclassrooms.

Measures.—The 10-item psychologicalcontrol subscale from the revised Ghildren'sReport of Parental Behavior Inventory(GRPBI; Schaefer, 1965b; Schludermann &Schludermann, personal communication,1988) was employed to measure psychologi-cal control (see Appendix A). The GRPBIhas been the only existing parent-child as-sessment instrument that includes a specificmeasure of psychological control. The scaleis typically considered single dimensionalindexing such components as guilt induc-tion, love withdrawal, and excessive pres-sure for change. However, some ofthe itemsappear ambiguous as to the extent to whichthey measure control of psychological pro-cesses per se versus control of behavior,such as "is always telling me how I shouldbehave" and "only keeps rules when it suitsher/him." Because of this conceptual ambi-guity and because an intent of this study isto define a measure of psychological controlthat is generalizable across diverse popula-tions, the subscale was submitted to factoranalysis using oblimin rotation to allow forcorrelation among factors.

Analyses were conducted separately foryouth reports of mother and father psycho-logical control on successive subsamples ofWhites, Blacks, middle-income, and low-income youtb, in every case witb separateanalyses for male and female adolescents (16separate analyses). Griteria for item reten-tion were that items must have a primaryloading of at least .50 and that the spreadbetween a primary and secondary loadingmust be at least .20. The two ambiguousitems mentioned above did not survive thisprocedure. Further, two items measuringguilt induction (Items 1 and 2, Appendix A)loaded consistently apart from the othersand were removed. The remaining six itemsdefined one factor when the full data set wasanalyzed as well as in a majority of the sub-sample analyses. In the few cases that a dualfactor solution was achieved, it was the lovewithdrawal items (Items 8-10, Appendix A)


which loaded separately. Table 1 presentsthe item text, factor loadings, Gronbach'salpha, means, and standard deviations forthe four parent-child dyads using the fullsample. Alphas for scales computed on thesubsamples ranged from .69 (fifth-grade fe-males) to .81 (White males) for perceivedpsychological control from mothers, andfrom .69 (fifth-grade females) to .82 (tenth-grade males) for perceived psychologicalcontrol from fathers. The response patternfor these items was a three-point Likert-typescale ranging from 1, "Not like her (him)," to3, "A lot like her (him)." Thus, higher scoresindicated greater perceived control.

Behavioral control was measured witha five-item monitoring scale often used infamily research with adolescents (e.g..Brown, Mounts, Lamborn, & Steinberg,1993). Students responded on a three-pointLikert-type scale from 1, "Doesn't know," to3, "Knows a lot," relative to bow much theirparents "really know": (a) "Where you go atnight," {b) "Where you are most afternoonsafter school," (c) "How you spend yourmoney," {d) "What you do with your freetime," and (e) "Who your friends are." Aswith psycbological control, higher scores in-dicated higher levels of bebavioral control.Monitoring was used as the measure of be-havioral control because it appears to be aparticularly reliable and powerful index offamily management and regulation (Pat-terson & Stouthamer-Loeber, 1984). Gron-bach's alpha for the full sample was .81 formales' reports of pairents and .80 for females'reports of parents. Subsample alphas rangedfrom .75 (Black females) to .82 (middle-income males). Gorrelations between behav-ioral control and psychological control wereconsistently negative, ranging from —.17(mother-son dyad) to — .26 (mother-daughterdyad).

The Anxious/Depressed and Delin-quent subscales scores ofthe Ghild BehaviorGhecklist—Youth Self-Report (Achenbach& Edelbrock, 1987) were used to measureinternalized and externalized problem be-haviors, respectiyely.

ResultsAnalysis of variance.—Analysis of vari-

ance was used to test variations in mean lev-els of psychological control and behavioralcontrol across the population subgroups. Foryouth reports of mothers' psychological con-trol, main effects were found for race, F =10.95, p = .001, with Black youth reportingmore control (M = 1.73, SD = .53) than

White youth (M = 1.59, SD = .51), and in-come level, F = 29.26, p < .001, with pooreryouth (M = 1.80, SD = .54) reporting morecontrol than higher-income youth (M = 1.55,SD = .50). Also, an interaction between sexand grade was found, F = 4.33, p = .013,showing fifth-grade males reporting morecontrol (M = 1.82, SD = .56) than fifth-gradefemales (M = 1.59, SD = .53). For youthreports of fathers' psychological control, thesame main effect for income level wasfound, F = 6.25, p = .013, with poorer youthreporting more control (M = 1.67, SD = .53)than higher-income youth (M = 1.57, SD =.51). In addition, an interaction between in-come and grade was discerned, F = 2.74, p= .065, where low-income fifth (M = 1.79,SD = .54) and eighth graders (M = 1.65, SD= .54) reported more control from fathersthan did middle-income fifth (M = 1.60, SD= .48) and eighth graders (M = 1.52, SD =.52), but with middle-income tenth graders(M = 1.62, SD = .52) reporting more controlthan low-income tenth graders (M = 1.50,SD = .45).

Regression.—Hierarchical regressionanalyses were used to test for the associa-tions between psycbological and bebavioralcontrol and youtb depression and delin-quency. So that obtained results would benet of the effect of membership in one ormore ofthe study's subsamples, youth grade,social class, and race were included as con-trol variables. Also, because of strong corre-lations between subscale scores ofthe GBG,the opposing problem bebavior type (i.e., in-ternalized and externalized) was used as acontrol variable in the regression analyses topartial out this comorbidity and isolate tbemore purely internalized and externalizedaspects of each measure of problem behav-iors. Further, the opposing form of controlwas added to the list of independent vari-ables in order to determine tbe unique effectof the two forms of control. Thus, when de-pression was the dependent variable, grade(fifth, eighth, tenth), social class (low in-come, middle income), race (White, Black),delinquency, and behavioral control wereentered first. In the next step, psychologicalcontrol was entered to determine the extentto which it explained unique variance afterpartialing out the effects of behavioral con-trol and all control variables. Tbe next modelentered the control variables and psycholog-ical control in the first step and then behav-ioral control in the second step to determineits unique contribution to depression. Tbetheory postulated that psychological control

•S §fa

inCO

O 175

I0)

ffl

IoO

o

t

CO in CO CD O5 -—t'» t- i> CO in in I

in00CO


(compared to behavioral control) would bethe strongest predictor of depression. There-fore, it was expected that psychological con-trol would explain more unique variance indepression than would behavioral control.

This procedure was then repeated withdelinquency as the dependent variable. Inthe first run, depression was entered withbehavioral control and the control variables,then psychological control. In the secondrun, behavioral control was entered in thesecond step. Since the theory postulated thatbehavioral control would be the strongerpredictor of delinquency, it was expectedthat these analyses would show that it ex-plained more unique variance in delin-quency than in psychological control.

Table 2 reports the findings ofthe hier-archical multiple regression analyses for thefour parent-child dyads. The table includesthe bivariate and standardized regression co-efficients for psychological control and be-havioral control as predictors of depressionand delinquency, the change in R^ (and thecorresponding F and p values) for psycho-logical and behavior control when each wasentered last in the equation, and the overallF, degrees of freedom, and adjusted R^ whenall independent variables (control and pre-dictor) were present.

Goefficients for the control variables arenot included in the table for ease of presen-tation. With depression as the criterion vari-able, neitber income level nor grade weresignificant predictors for any ofthe four par-ent-child dyads. Race was consistently nega-tively related to depression (higher forBlacks), but only reached significance for themother-daughter dyad (beta = — .23). Delin-quency was significant for all dyads (averagebeta = .25) . With delinquency as the crite-rion variable, neitber income level nor racewas predictive in any dyad. Grade level (av-erage beta = .16) and depression (averagebeta = .23) were positively significant for alldyads.

It was hypothesized that psychologicalcontrol, compared to behavioral control,would demonstrate unique predictive powerfor internalized behavior such as depression,and the reverse for externalized bebaviorsuch as delinquency. Evidence relating tothese propositions is found by comparingvalues in column 3 (unique variance ex-plained by psycbological control) with val-ues in column 7 (unique variance explainedby behavioral control). When evaluating

these findings, it should be kept in mind thatit is the relative variance explained (i.e.,unique variance explained by psychologicalcontrol compared to unique variance ex-plained by behavioral control) rather thanthe absolute amount of variance explainedby eitber form of control that is most infor-mative. Large amounts of unique varianceexplained were not expected because thevariance explained by the alternative formof control, the opposing problem behaviortype, and the demographic variables bad al-ready been partialed out.

Both hypotheses were supported. Sig-nificant unique variance in depression wasexplained in all four dyads by psychologicalcontrol (average across dyads = .033) and inno case by behavioral control. (The higherthe reported psychological control, thehigher the depression.) Further as expected,behavioral control explained substantiallymore unique variance in delinquency (aver-age across dyads = .085) than did psycholog-ical control, which explained significantvariance (.02) only for the mother-son dyad.(The higher the reported behavioral control,the lower the delinquency.)

Study 2

There are good reasons to believe tbatself-reports from cbildren may be the mostvalid way to measure psychological controlsince feeling controlled, devalued, manipu-lated, and criticized is very much a subjec-tive experience. However, it is also of in-terest to determine if such controllingbehaviors can be observed. The purpose ofthe second study was to develop and test anobservational coding scheme for psychologi-cal control.

MethodSubjects.—Subjects were participants

in the Adolescent Transitions Program, anintervention program conducted by the Ore-gon Social Leaming Genter beginning in1988 which was designed to provide preven-tative interventions for high-risk familieswith a child facing the transition to adoles-cence (see Dishion & Andrews, 1995). Fami-lies {N = 158) were self-referred and se-lected based on a telepbone screening forthe presence of several dimensions of childrisk (e.g., relationship with parents, emo-tional adjustment, family substance abuse,stress, etc.). The average age ofthe children(JV = 83 males, 75 females) was 12. Ninety-five percent of the families were EuropeanAmerican.

n

taH

o

nffl

i-H0O'Ô5 rtOOrfOJcO'^co'* co-^co-*

OcOt-CO OOO-^CJ!

in COo —<

** * * *-—I CD 00 "Jin O l> (M

: O <> O <

<M cq cq

o o o o

* * * ** ^ * Ôi -^ a> Cicq CO cq COI I I

in t- •* »CO CO CO CO

* * * *in t- CQ i>1-1 oq CD COCO O CO '-i^ H C<

I I I I

00 00 05 00-- cq Tt TiCD CO cq cq

iSSS

ffl* * * *

Ol 00 00 I-H o O :


TABLE 3

FACTOH LOADINGS, CRONBACH'S ALPHA, MEANS, AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS FORPSYCHOLOGICAL CONTROL SCALE—OBSERVER REPORT (PCS-OBS),

BY SEX OF YOUTH AND PARENT

Psychological Control Scale—Observer Report Mothers Fathers

1. Constrain verbal expressions .72 .692. Invalidating feelings .78 .753. Personal attack .85 .804. Guilt induction .68 .665. Love withdrawal .67 .686. Erratic emotional behavior .71 .70Eigenvalue 3.27 3.07Percent variance 54 51Cronbach's alpha .82 .80M 1.51 1.51SD .57 . .552V 153 84

Measures.—The videotaped familyproblem-solving task (Forgatch, 1989; Robin& Foster, 1989) was used to assess parent-child interactions. Before the videotapedinteraction, parents and children identifiedpotential conflict topics and rated the emo-tional valence of the topic. Topics rated bythe parent and child as the "hottest" wereselected and randomly ordered for discus-sion in each of two 10-min problem-solvingsessions. Tbe Family Process Gode (FPG;Dishion, Gardner, Patterson, Reid, & Thibo-deaux, 1983) was used to code interactions.The FPG is a micro social coding system thatrecords family interaction in real time andcaptures the content and affective valence ofthe interaction. For the current analysis, theexisting code for Family Management wasused as the measure of behavioral control.This is a composite variable made up ofcoder impressions on monitoring, limit set-ting, relationship quality, problem solving,and positive reinforcement. The standard-ized item alphas were .73 for mothers and.73 for fathers.

It was necessary to create an observa-tional measure of psychological controlsince none has existed to this point. Thisturned out to be a very valuable exercise be-cause it demanded careful thinking aboutthe behavioral components of the construct.Ghildren can report on feeling controlled,but it is also important to know what parentsspecifically do that may fuel these percep-tions. In developing this measure, I con-sulted the literature and colleagues from var-ious related disciplines as well as studentswho described their experiences with theirparents. This resulted in the formation of amacro-rating scale to assess the parent's be-

havioral display of six theoretically relevantidentifying characteristics of psychologicalcontrol: constraining verbal expression, in-validating feelings, personal attack, guilt in-duction, love withdrawal, and erratic emo-tional behavior. The measure is labeled thePsychological Gontrol Scale—Observer Rat-ing (PGS-OBS). The full text of the descrip-tions given to coders for each of the dimen-sions is reported in Appendix B. Factoranalysis of the six identifying characteristicscores with oblimin rotation produced a sin-gle factor solution for mothers' psychologicalcontrol and a two-factor solution for fathers'psychological control, with love withdrawal,erratic emotions, and invalidating loadingseparately from attack, constraining, andguilt induction. Nevertheless, Gronbach'salpha coefficients were strong for both par-ents (.83 for mothers, .81 for fathers) whenusing the full set of items, and for the sake ofconsistency all items were retained for bothparents. Results of the factor analysis (forc-ing one factor for fathers) are depicted in Ta-ble 3. Gorrelations between psychologicalcontrol and family management were — .42for mothers and — .38 for fathers.

Youth criterion variables were mea-sured 1 year following the videotaped familyinteraction. Depression was measured byway of the Depressed Mood score from theparent version of the Diagnostic InterviewSchedule for Ghildren (DISG; Fisher, Shaf-fer, Wicks, & Piacentini, 1989). Delinquencywas measured with the Delinquent subscaleof the Ghild Behavior Ghecklist (parent re-port; Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1983).

ResultsMeans for observer reports of mother

and father psychological control ^vere the


same (see Table 3), and there were no demo-graphic variables available to test subsamplevariation. The regression procedure fromStudy 1 was replicated separately on eacbparent-child dyad. Results are shown in Ta-ble 4. The expected unique association be-tween psychological control and depressionwas evident in the mother-daughter dyad,but for the other dyads, psychological con-trol was unrelated to depression, even at thebivariate level. Gontrary to expectations, be-havioral control had a unique associationwith depression for the father-son dyad. Asfor delinquency, the expected unique asso-ciation between behavioral control and de-linquency was evident for the mother-sonand mother-daughter dyads but not for thefather-child dyads.

Study 3Study 3 returned to a survey methodol-

ogy. This study had several purposes: (a) totest a newly created self-report measure ofpsychological control, one that is more be-haviorally specific than the GRPBI and com-patible with the observer ratings in Study 2,{b) to vary the sample and the measurementofthe criterion variables to provide a validat-ing test for the findings of Study 1, and (c)to test the model with longitudinal data.

MethodSubjects.—Data come from an ongoing

4-year longitudinal study of 933 familieswith adolescent children from Ogden, Utah.A stratified random sample (Hispanic eth-nicity) was drawn of fifth- and eighth-gradeclassrooms in the Ogden school district in1994. The sample was split equally betweenmale and female students and grade, andwas 71% White (16% Hispanic), 84% middleincome, and 46% Mormon. Income statuswas determined by student response to thequestion, "Gompared to other kids your age,how well-off do you think your family is?"Responses ranged from 1, "We are a lotpoorer than most," to 5, "We are a lot richerthan most" (see Pearlin, Lieberman, Men-eghan, & MuUan, 1981). Gategories 1 and 2were collapsed to represent low-incomeyouth. Gategories 3—5 were collapsed to rep-resent middle-income youth. Forty-five per-cent of low-income youth reported livingwith both parents, 29% with mother only.Fifty-seven percent of middle-income youthreported living with both parents, 19% withmother only. An extensive survey on familyinteraction, personality, youth behavior, andpeer, school, and neighborbood experienceswere administered to the students in class.

Measures.—Items written to tap thespecific aspects of psychological control arefound in Appendix G. Items 1 —3 measuredGonstraining Verbal Expression; items 4—6measured Invalidating Feelings; items 7-9indexed Personal Attack; items 10-11 weretaken from the GRPBI to measure Guilt In-duction; items 12—14 were also taken fromthe GRPBI to measure Love Withdrawal;and items 15-16 indexed Erratic EmotionalBehavior.

These 16 items were submitted to factoranalysis witb oblimin rotation. Separateanalyses were conducted for sex of parent,sex of youth, income level, race, and reli-gious affiliation (a total of 24 separate analy-ses). The same logic and criteria for item re-tention from Study 1 was used with theintent of defining a single-dimensional scaleof psychological control. With this proce-dure, eight items were retained that formeda single factor when utilizing the full dataset and on the majority of subsamples. Aswas the case in Study 1, in a few exceptionalcases the love withdrawal items tended tofactor separately. Item content, factor load-ings, and Gronbacb's alpha for the eight-item scale are reported in Table 5. Alphasfor the individual subsampes ranged from.72 (Hispanic females) to .85 (eighth-grademales) for reports of psychological controlfrom mothers, and from .74 (low-incomemales) to .86 (Hispanic males) for reports ofpsychological control from fathers. The scaleretained the identifying characteristics of in-validating feelings (Item 1), constrainingverbal expressions (Items 2—3), personal at-tack (Items 4-5), and love withdrawal (Items6-8). The scale has been labeled thePsychological Gontrol Scale—Youth Self-Report (PGS-YSR).

Behavioral control was measured in thesame manner as in Study 1 except that stu-dents reported separately on their mothersand fathers. Alphas ranged from .64 (His-panic females) to .80 (eighth-grade males)for mother's monitoring and from .81 (Mor-mon males) to .90 (low-income males) for fa-ther's monitoring. As in the previous twostudies, correlations between behavioralcontrol and psychological control were con-sistently negative, ranging from — .17 for themother-son dyad to —.37 for the mother-daughter dyad.

Also in contrast to Study 1, Study 3 usedthe Ghild Depression Inventory (GDI; Ko-vacs, 1992) as a measure of depression. De-linquency was measured by the Delinquentsubscale of tbe GBGL-YSR as in Study 1.

ffl

IsiI

u 2go

§ 1Pi Ix,

O XI

il

a

ffl

•§ oq

ffl

I

co" co' co" co"

* * * * * ** * * * * # *..t- rjH o in m o o (CO oq oq c^ • * q lo (rjH •"^ i n i n CD t> CO '

88^8

) O CTJ 1—I> O CO O

I I

q q ,-H q

• ^ CO

C O O O O ^

qqqco

I r

CO cq 00 oCO o 1—1 i n

CO m <o o <

CO i n COcq cq o "

O 5 ' — I O 3 C Ocqco^cq

I I

m o o rp

o o o CO

88:

60 : '

| J

111

s<5

I

i n

Jffl

H

0

aOa<Qz

C/3

a2<

sp

oXEd

t«

P3

ID

rt

c1

1

C/3

o

coO

c;

olo

p

J

ta

I

0)

OH,

"oHoO

CO CO 0000 r f rt<

I>inoooqino5a5^'^ ococococococococoincoco ooin-*

cqrf

rfCOinl>rfCOOOin COrfcOtr* CO Ô ^ o t o t'^ **O t"™ ^ 0 00 f ^ ^

CO CO ' i-H ' C

rf (

coco-ôoomcaoosi c q c D < q t t i n t c qco' CD

CO " ^ 0500 m • *

be •fi

%"3 2

1

o "0 >

1o abe ^

E a

4) C3

.u 3 o

e bo '


ResultsAnova.—Table 5 shows the means and

standard deviations for the PGS-YSR for thefour parent-child dyads. Analysis of variancewas used to test for differences by sex ofyouth, sex of parent, grade (fifth, eighth), in-come (low, middle), race (White, Hispanic),and religious affiliation (non-Mormon, Mor-mon). For youth reports of mothers' psycho-logical control, main effects were found forrace, F = 8.36, p = .004, and sex, F = 10.52,p = .001, with Hispanics (M = 1.60, SD =.49) reporting more control than Whites (M= 1.46, SD = .46), and males (M = 1.54,SD = .49) reporting more control than fe-males (M = L44, SD = .46). An interactionbetween race and sex, F = 5.63, p = .018,indicated that Hispanic males (M = 1.74, SD= .54) reported more control than Whitemales (M = 1.49, SD = .47) with no differ-ence between groups of females. Further, athree-way interaction between grade, in-come, and religion was discerned, F = 4.21,p = .04, revealing that Mormon youth re-ported less control than non-Mormon youthoverall; for the case of poorer Mormon fami-lies, but not less poor Mormon families, lesscontrol was reported by the older cobort(eighth grade).

For youth reports of fathers' psychologi-cal control, the same main effects for race, F= 12.72, p < .001, and sex, F = 3.92, p =.048, were found. In addition, two three-wayinteractions were found for grade, race, andsex, F = 4.41, p = .036, and income, race,and religion, F = 3.95, p = .047. The firstinteraction revealed that in addition to thefact that Hispanic youth reported more con-trol overall than did non-Hispanic youth,they were further distinguished by a reverseage pattern for males and femaJes, with re-ported control by females increasing fromfifth to eighth grade but decreasing formales. The second interaction showed thatthe equivalent reported control from bothpoor and less poor Mormon youth was theonly exception to the pattern of higher re-ported control by poorer families.

The same procedure for the regressionanalyses from the previous studies was fol-lowed. The same control variables fromStudy 1 were used (grade, income, race)with the addition of religious affiliation(non-Mormon, Mormon). As for the controlvariables, income level was a significantnegative predictor of depression (averagebeta = - .13 , p < .01) for all dyads. Delin-quency was a consistent positive predictorof depression (average beta = .33, p < .001).

Grade, race, or religious affiliation were notconsistently predictive. For delinquency,the only consistent predictors were depres-sion (average beta = .33, p < .001) and reli-gion (average beta = — .13, p < .01). Table 6presents the findings for the parental controlvariables.

As was the case in Study 1, substantiallymore unique variance in depression was ex-plained by psychological control (col. 3; av-erage across dyads = .056) than by behav-ioral control (col. 7; average across dyads =.012). Also, as expected, behavioral controlexplained unique variance in delinquency(col. 7; average across dyads = .025). How-ever, contrary to expectations, psychologicalcontrol also explained unique variance indelinquency (col. 3; average across dyads =.03). In the first analyses of the theoreticalmodel (Barber et al., 1994), it was found thatthe proposed specialized effects did not ob-tain for the fifth grade subsample ofthe data,as they did for the eighth- and tenth-gradesubsamples. As here, depression and delin-quency were relatively equally predicted byboth forms of control for the fifth-grade sam-ple. We speculated that preadolescents maynot be advanced enough in their develop-ment of psychological autonomy to be sensi-tive to forms of control that might intrude inthis process. It was therefore logical that thisissue be pursued in attempting to under-stand these findings in the Utah data.

An additional set of regression analyseswere run to test the possibility in the Utahdata that psychological control was the moresalient predictor of delinquency among thefifth-grade subjects than the eighth-gradesubjects. Independent variables in the re-gressions (done separately for reports ofmothers' and fathers' psychological control)included depression, behavioral control,psychological control, sex of youth, grade,religious affiliation, race, and economicstanding, all two-way interaction terms be-tween sex, grade, and psychological control,and the one three-way interaction term be-tween these variables. Independent vari-ables were centered before creating theinteraction terms in order to prevent multi-colinearity (Jaccard, Turrisi, & Wan, 1990).For youth reports of mothers, the two-wayinteraction between grade and psycbologi-cal control was significant; the same interac-tion was significant for youth reports of fa-thers along witb the three-way interactionbetween grade, sex, and psychological con-trol. Separate regressions were run next todetermine the strength of the association

CD

wffl

CC-

•£ CDffl

CDco

CO CO ^ O•—I CO QO CO

CO 'Ho •-H

00 i n •«)< cqcq CO c^ CO

CO t - m r f05 CO I - rH

I cq 1^> o oo o

I I

i n 05c^ CO

I I

* * * *oq CO cq oqr f CO CO -H

B

« 3o JS

cq CO cq CO

CO CO rjH o• ^ CO 00 0 0• * r f CO CO

00

> CO 00 -HI CO ^ CO

I 05 r-H in> oq i> -H

I rf O —I> o o o

I O 00 00I r f -< CJ

I I I

i-H r-H CO CO

CO q rf qO5 05 CO 05

oSoS

1—i t— I> O rH O5 O 'CO <M C^ (>J (M I—* (M (

;5gg

B

nig aj (ud; 3 S 3 ffl B

.XH

11

: in o •

J V „ a

5Q


TABLE 7

BETAS, t, AND p VALUES FOR INTERACTION TERMS AND SUBSEQUENTREGRESSION ANALYSES

Youth Problems Standfirdlzed Beta

Delinquency:Mothers:

Psychological control X grade - .07 -2.39 .02Psychological control-—fifth grade .27 5.94 .00Psychological control—eighth grade .17 3.59 .00

Fathers:Psychological control X grade - .07 -2.34 .02Psychological control x grade x sex .06 1.85 .06Psychological control:

Fifth boys .25 4.13 .00Fifth girls .30 4.19 .00Eighth boys .14 1.81 .07Eighth girls .16 2.65 .01

Depression:Mothers:

Psychological control X grade .06 2.18 .03Fifth .30 6.65 .00Eighth .34 8.25 .00

Fathers:Psychological control x grade .06 1.96 .05

Fifth .25 5.48 .00Eighth .29 6.68 .00

(beta) between psycbological control anddelinquency in both grades, and as ex-pected, the beta was stronger for fifth-gradesubjects (see Table 7). The same analyseswere then run using Study 1 data to see ifthese findings could be replicated. Only par-tial replication was found, with the asso-ciation between male's reports of mother'spsychological control and delinquency in-creasing from grade 5 to grade 8 and thensharply decreasing by grade 10. For girls,however, the association increased steadilyfrom mildly negative in grade 5 to moder-ately positive in grade 10.

To provide further contrast between therole of psychological control in internalizedversus externalized problems, the sameanalyses were run with depression as the de-pendent variable. The two-way interactionbetween grade and psychological controlwas significant for both mothers and fathers.The opposite age effect from that from delin-quency was found, with the association be-tween psychological control and depressionincreasing with age (Table 7). No interac-tions were found for grade using Study 1data.

Not presented bere in detail are analy-ses utilizing tbe GRPBI as a measure of psy-chological control as was done in Study 1.All analyses were repeated to provide a com-

parison between the GRPBI and the newPGS. Using Study 3 data the GRPBI factoredthe same as in Study 1 and was reduced tothe same six-item subset. Other analyseswere essentially comparable with alphas forthe GRPBI across subgroups marginallylower than the PGS and the predictivepower of the GRPBI to the criterion vari-ables somewhat less as well.

Finally, with data from the second wavejust in it was possible to test the modelacross time. Data were collected from youthby mail in the second year. Eighty-three per-cent of the original sample provided data.All constructs were measured with the sameitems in both years. Structural equation anal-ysis (LISREL VII; Joreskog & Sorbom,1989) was used to test the model over time.Figure 1 depicts the model using Year 2 par-enting predicting Year 2 problem behaviors,controlling for Year 1 problem bebaviors.The model replicated the findings from theregression analyses with psychological con-trol significantly associated with both formsof problem behavior and bebavioral controlpredicting delinquency only. These longitu-dinal findings contribute meaningfully tothe understanding ofthe relations among pa-rental control and youth difficulty in twoways. First, they provide important valida-tion for the link between parental control


PsychologicalControlYear 2

GFI=,999AGFI=.985RMSR=.O1Standardized solutionAll listed coefficients significant at tiie .01 level.

FIG. 1.—Longitudinal analysis of parental control and youth problems

and problem behaviors. Unlike the cross-sectional analyses, the longitudinal test con-trolled for the stability of problem behaviorsfrom Year 1 to Year 2 and for the effect ofprevious problem bebaviors on subsequentparenting. Tbe fact tbat parental control stillevidenced a significant association witb Year2 problem behaviors after these controlswere implemented is important confirmingevidence for the salience of psychologicaland behavioral control in the developmentof youth difficulty. The age and sex differ-ences found in the regression analyses wereno longer evident, however, when testingover time with the multiple group test func-tion within LISREL.

The second contribution of the longitu-dinal findings is that they provide an indica-tion ofthe reciprocal relations that may existamong these variables. As tbe figure sbows.Year 2 psychological control was signifi-cantly predicted by Year 1 depression anddelinquency. Parents of youth who weremore depressed and delinquent the previ-ous year employed higher levels of psycho-logical control. Year 2 behavioral control wassignificantly predicted by Year 1 delin-quency, such that parents exercised less be-bavioral regulation of youth wbo were moredelinquent the previous year. Taken to-

gether, these findings hint that parents oftroubled youtb are more likely to increasetheir efforts to psychologically control theirchildren while at the same time relaxingtheir bebavioral control (of delinquent chil-dren), which in this case means less aware-ness (monitoring) of their children's socialnetworks and day-to-day activities. In addi-tion to providing indications of child effectson parenting, this portion of the model alsosupplied further evidence of the particularassociations between the types of controland problem behaviors. In tbese data, it ap-pears tbat psycbological control is associatedwith (predicts and is predicted by) bothforms of youtb difficulty, wbereas behavioralcontrol is uniquely related to (predicts andis predicted by) delinquency.

General Results: Summary andDiscussion

In refocusing attention on tbe psycho-logical control construct, this set of studieshad three basic purposes: (1) to demonstratethat psychological control could be reliablyand generally measured, (2) to verify its sa-lience to aspects of youth development, and(3) to test the hypothesis that psychologicalcontrol would have specialized associationswith youth internalized problems, in con-


trast to the proposed specialized associationsbetween behavioral control and externalizedproblems.

All three studies provide evidence thatthe construct of psychological control can bereliably measured. In the survey studies(Studies 1 and 3), care was taken to demon-strate reliability across samples, variety ofmeasurement, sex of parent and youth, age,race, social class, and religious affiliation.The existing GRPBI was refined in bothstudies to a six-item measure useful for allsubgroups. The eight-item PGS-YSR fromStudy 3 improves upon the GRPBI primarilybecause of the greater behavioral specificityof the items, rendering it more directly use-ful for intervention and prevention efforts.That it is compatible with the observationalmeasure (PGS-OBS) from Study 2 is an addi-tional advantage should the PGS-OBS befound useful in further studies. The PGS-YSR will be used in future work on this proj-ect. As for variances in prevalence of psycho-logical control, there was fairly consistentevidence that greater levels of parental psy-chological control were reported by pooreryouth, minority youth, and males.

The survey studies also showed thatpsychological control is a significant pre-dictor of youth problem behaviors. Theseassociations, whether with depression orantisocial behavior (delinquency), are note-worthy because they are net ofthe effects ofthe youth's position in social strata, many ofwhich themselves affect the level of prob-lem behavior. More particularly, however,the associations illustrate the unique contri-bution of psychological control compared tobehavioral control. Thus, beyond any vari-ance shared by these two forms of control,psychological control was consistently foundto be a salient factor in predicting problembehaviors. The longitudinal analyses alsoprovided initial indications of reciprocal re-lations between psychological (and behav-ioral) control and youth problem behaviors.

The fact that psychological control wasonly salient for the father-daughter dyad inthe observational data of Study 2 raises ques-tions about potential sex differences and/orthe eventual usefulness of observer ratedpsychological control. Perhaps psychologi-cal control is only influential to the extentthat it is perceived as such by the child. Glar-ification requires larger and more varieddata sets than the present one. Once brokendown by sex of child, the sample sizes werequite small, which may have had an effect

on the stability ofthe coefficients. It shouldbe noted, also, that the analyses of these datarepresented a particularly demanding test:observer-rated psychological control pre-dicting youth depression as reported by par-ents 1 year later.

Tbere was mixed support for tbe hy-pothesized specialized effects of psychologi-cal versus behavioral control. As expected,psychological control explained unique vari-ance in depression in Studies 1 and 3. Fur-ther evidence of its relation to internalizedforms of functioning is appearing in analysesin which psychological control has beenfound to uniquely predict loneliness (Free-man & Barber, 1996) and eating disorders(Jensen & Barber, 1995) in adolescents. Fur-tber, in all three studies the proposedunique association between behavioral con-trol and externalized problems was evident(only for the mother-child dyad in Study 2).This confirms and complements much pastwork on the risks for externalized behaviorproblems of inadequate behavioral regula-tion. However, the findings were not consis-tent for the proposed specialized associationbetween psychological control and internal-ized problems. Psychological control wasuniquely related to depression in Study 1,not predictive in Study 2, and equallypredictive of both criterion variables inStudy 3.

Because there is little research specifi-cally measuring psychological control andits covariates, there is little to guide an ex-planation of this inconsistency. Post hocanalyses of a developmental effect demon-strated that the unexpected association withexternalized problems does attenuate witbage. This finding, paired with the increasedassociation between psychological controland depression with age (Study 3), supportthe notion that psychological control hasmore general effects until which time thatthe controlled subject has achieved an iden-tity sufficiently well formed to be tbreat-ened. However, this view can serve as apartial explanation at best because the inter-action between psychological control andage did not fully account for the direct asso-ciation between psychological control anddelinquency in Study 3. The explanationis further limited by tbe failure to find de-velopmental effects in the longitudinalanalyses.

Why psychological control predicteddelinquency in Study 3, therefore, remainsan open question. Analyses not reported


here which used the same measures (GRPBIand GBG) for the predictor and criterionvariables in Study 3 that were used in Study1 eliminate the possibility of difference dueto measurement variability and raise thequestion of sample differences. Althoughdemographic variability was controlled inthe studies presented here, there is the pos-sibility that the model will function differ-ently among the different subgroups tbatvaried across the two studies (e.g.. Whites,Blacks, Hispanics, Baptists, Mormons). Fu-ture analyses also will begin to focus on indi-vidual differences (e.g., cbild and parentpersonality, self-esteem, etc.) and contextualfactors (e.g., levels of family stress and con-fiict) in an attempt to more precisely clarifythe link between psychological control andyouth characteristics, a link that is appar-ently more complex than that between be-havioral control and youtb problems.

At a more general level, a contributionof this set of studies has been to demonstratetbe usefulness of disaggregating parentingtypologies that have so predominated inmuch of the parenting literature. Althoughtypological work, particularly that of Baum-rind, has made very important contributions,merging constructs at the analytical levelloses potentially valuable information. Theanalyses presented here suggest that psy-chological and bebavioral control, commoncomponents of prevailing typologies, aremeaningfully different. Wben measured in-dependently, it becomes apparent that notonly are they negatively related to eachother as shown in all three studies, but theyappear to function differently vis-a-vis dis-crete youth characteristics. With replication,such findings may benefit theory buildingand intervention/prevention efforts. Thisspecificity may also aid in resolving someperplexing patterns of findings from pastwork. For example, the question of whysome children of authoritarian parents are"subdued" and others "out of control" (Mac-coby & Martin, 1983, p. 44) may be partlyexplained by variations in the predominanceof psychological control versus bebavioralcontrol in the families of the two sets ofchildren.

Finally, three points are important to setthis work on psychological control in thebroader context of current work on parentsocialization and child development. Thefirst has to do with the distinction betweenparenting styles and parenting practices re-cently put forth by Darling and Steinberg(1993). Altbougb the items measuring psy-

chological control (at least in the PGS mea-sures) index specific behaviors of parents,the self-reported construct would best be de-fined according to Darling and Steinberg'sconceptualization as a parenting style andnot a parenting practice. This is so becausethe construct is not measured in the contextof a specific interaction; rather, it representsthe extent to which the youth reporter per-ceives the controlling bebaviors to describehis or her parent generally. This contrastssubstantially, for example, from otber workinterested in describing parenting bebaviorsthat occur during a specific interaction (e.g.,where one family member tries to controlanother, as in Baumrind, 1967, 1971) or inresponse to a discrete event (e.g., a child'smisdeed, as in Grusec & Goodnow, 1994).

Though Darling and Steinberg's (1993)conceptualization becomes somewhat un-clear when they credit a parenting style(compared to a parenting practice) with pa-rental beliefs, values, and emotions—eventhough little work actually measures theseaspects of the parent—it is still easier to in-fer such from a construct that is measured asa general representation of parenting com-pared to a tactical behavior occurring in aspecific context. In the end, then, the con-cept of style is useful potentially, as it mayset a stage on which parenting practices taketheir meaning as Darling and Steinberg con-tend, but also because it signals a differentdirection in which explanations for parentalbehavior are sought. To the extent that psy-chological control represents a generalizedpattern of behavior (style) that involves (en-dorses) constraining, invalidating, and emo-tionally manipulative behavior toward achild, then explanations of the source ofsuch behavior lie more likely in the parent'sown historical and emotional experiencethan in any specific event or interaction thatmay precipitate it. Thus, it would be of inter-est to investigate how the parent was reared,parental beliefs about child developmentand personal autonomy, as well as the par-ent's level of ego integration, self-esteem,and satisfaction in other interpersonal rela-tionships.

The second point is to reinforce thefinding that psychological control appears tobe a consistently negative and inhibiting ex-perience for children. The cross-sectionalanalyses in Study 3 showing that the associa-tions between psycbological control andproblem behaviors vary as a function of ageshould not be misunderstood to mean that atsome point this form of control is neutral or


positive. To the contrary, there appears tobe no compelling evidence for a positivefunction of such intrusive behavior. Someconfusion on this point can arise when psy-chological control is not carefully distin-guished from other forms of psychologicallyoriented parental behavior such as induc-tion, which has been shown to enhance psy-chological and social development (see Gru-sec & Goodnow, 1994; Hof&nan, 1970; andRollins & Thomas, 1979, for reviews). Theone area that could be construed as contro-versial in this regard is love withdrawal, adefining characteristic of psychological con-trol as measured here and previously. Yet,although at least one study has suggested apositive effect of love withdrawal for compli-ance (Ghapman & Zahn-Waxler, 1981), it isnot clear whether this is just a short-termeffect, and there are more studies that sug-gest negative effects (see Maccoby & Martin,1983). At best, perbaps, love withdrawal canbe viewed in discrete interactions as ameans to get a child to pay attention to themessage to be communicated through thepositive intervention of induction (Hoffman,1994).

The last point has to do with the devel-opmental relevance of psychological control.This set of studies has focused on youth ap-proaching and proceeding through adoles-cence. It seems that psychological control isparticularly relevant at this stage of the lifecourse given the autonomy-oriented pro-cesses occurring in the form of identity de-velopment (Erikson, 1968; Marcia, 1980)and transformations in family and peerrelationships (Gollins & Repinski, 1990;Steinberg, 1990; Youniss & Smollar, 1985).Thus as young people more firmly definethemselves as connected to— yet separatefrom—their significant others, it would beexpected that intrusions into this processof self-formation would have negative con-sequences. Yet it would be a mistake toconclude that psychological control is onlyrelevant to children at this advanced psy-chological and emotional age. If, in orderto be sensitive to age-specific tasks and ca-pacities of children, psychological control isconceptualized at a more abstract level asintrusion into the developing child's self-expression—whatever the form of that ex-pression might be—then the construct be-comes usefal across the life course. Thus,a parent who regularly curtails an infant'sattempts at motor movements, forbids thetoddler's exploratory forays, or interfereswith the beginning of reasoning capacities

in the older child might be serving the samenegative function as the parent who con-strains, invalidates, or manipulates the ado-lescent's more clearly articulated expres-sions of psychological experience.

In sum, though there is more work to bedone on psychological control, there appearsto be good reason in future socialization re-search to include specific attention to par-enting practices that constrain, invalidate,and manipulate a child's psychological andemotional experience and expression. Theconstruct differs notably from more behav-iorally oriented control, it is measurableacross a broad spectrum of families, and itappears, at least when subjectively experi-enced and reported, to have consistentlynegative associations with youth compe-tence.

Appendix APsyehological Autonomy versusPsychological Control (CRPBI;Schaefer, 1965b; Schludermann& Schludermann, personalcommunication, 1988)1 = Not like her (him); 2 = Somewhat like her(him); 3 = A lot like her (him)

My Mother (Father) is a person who . . .

1. tells me of all the things she (he) had donefor me.

2. says, if 1 really cared for her (him), I wouldnot do things that cause her (him) to worry.

3. is always telling me how I should behave.4. would like to be able to tell me what to do all

the time.5. wants to control whatever I do.6. is always trying to change me.7. only keeps rules when it suits her (him).8. is less friendly with me, if I do not see things

her (his) way.9. will avoid looking at me when I have disap-

pointed her (him).10. if I have hurt her (his) feelings, stops talking

to me until I please her (him) again.

Appendix BPsychological ControlScale—Observer Report (PCS-OBS)Use the following scale for items below:

0 = Not true; 1 = Somewhat true; 2 = True;3 = Very true

1. Constraining Verbal Expressions

Family members prevented or interfered with an-other family member's talking by behaviors suchas: changing the subject. Interrupting, speakingfor the other, lecturing, switching topics, domi-nating the conversations, asking leading ques-


tions, or answering their own questions. Familymembers showed disinterest in what another fam-ily member had to say by ignoring the other's com-ments or by physical postures that communicatedisinterest (e.g., looking or facing away from thechild).

2. Invalidating Feelings

Family members invalidated the feelings of an-other family member by discounting, misinter-preting, or assigning a value (e.g., good/bad, right/wrong) to the feelings that were being expressed.Family members engaged in mind reading (e.g.,say they know what the other is thinking or feel-ing). Family members were sarcastic or teasingwhen responding to the feelings being expressed.

3. Personal Attack on Child

Family members attacked the worth or place inthe family of another family member by re-minding the other of his or her responsibilities tothe family, saying the other is not a responsiblefamily member, or questioning the other's loyaltyto the family. Family members brought up an-other member's past mistakes or embarrassing be-haviors as evidence ofthe accused member's lackof worth. Family members blamed another for theother's own or the family's problems. Familymembers spoke in a very condescending oi pa-tronizing way to another member or acted as ifthey were a therapist to the other member.

4. Guilt Induction

Family members laid guilt trips on another familymember by pointing out that another's behaviorhad a negative emotional impact on a family mem-ber, such as making them worry, feel sad or de-pressed, or lose self-esteem. Family memberstried to evoke sympathy from another by enumer-ating all ofthe things they have done for the other.Family members played the role of martyr or con-tinually blamed themselves for the other's prob-lems. Family members said that if the other reallycared for them, she or he would do or be what thefamily member expected.

5. Love Withdrawal

Family members threatened the withdrawal oftheir love or attention if another family memberdid not do or become what the other expected.Family members diverted their gaze, turnedaway, made a displeased facial expression, orphysically left the interaction when another fam-ily member expressed something contrary to theirexpectations.

6. Erratic Emotional Behavior

Family members showed erratic emotional behav-ior in interaction with another family member byvacillating between caring and attacking expres-

Appendix CPsychological Control Scale—YouthSelf-Report (PCS-YSR)1 = Not like her (him); 2 = Somewhat like her(him); 3 = A lot like her (him)

My Mother (Father) is a person who . . .

*1. changes the subject, whenever I have some-thing to say.

*2. finishes my sentences whenever I talk.*3. often interrupts me.*4. acts like she (he) knows what I'm thinking or

feeling.*5. would like to be able to tell me how to feel

or think about things all the time.*6. is always trying to change how I feel or think

about things.*7. blames me for other family members' prob-

lems.*8. brings up my past mistakes when she (he) crit-

icizes me.9. tells me that I am not a loyal or good member

ofthe family.10. tells me of all the things she (he) had done

for me.11. says, if I really cared for her (him), I would

not do things that cause her (him) to worry.12. is less friendly with me, if I do not see things

her (his) way.13. will avoid looking at me when I have disap-

pointed her (him).14. if I have hurt her (his) feelings, stops talking

to me until I please her (him) again.15. often changes his (her) moods when with me.16. goes back and forth between being warm and

critical toward me.

ReferencesAchenbach, T. M. (1985). Assessment and taxon-

omy of child and adolescent psychopathol-ogy. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Achenbach, T. M., & Edelbrock, C. (1983). Man-ual for the child behavior checklist and re-vised child behavior profile. Burlington, VT:University of Vermont, Department of Psy-chiatry.

Achenbach, T. M., & Edelbrock, C. (1987). Man-ual for the youth self-report and profile. Bur-lington, VT: University of Vermont, Depart-ment of Psychiatry.

Allen, J. P., Hauser, S. T., Eickholt, C, Bell,K. L., & O'Connor, T. G. (1994). Autonomyand relatedness in family interactions as pre-dictors of expressions of negative adolescentaffect. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 4,535-552.

Allinsmith, W. (1960) Moral standards: II. The

* Items retained after factor analysis and therefore constituting the flnal version ofthe PCS-YSR to be used in future work.

learning of moral standards. In D. R. Miller& G. E. Swanson (Eds.), Inner conflict anddefense (pp. 141-176). New York: Holt, Rine-hart, & Winston.

Baldwin, A. L. (1948). Socialization and the par-ent-child relationship. Child Development,19, 127-137.

Barber, B. K. (1992). Family, personality, and ado-lescent problem behaviors. Journal of Mar-riage and the Family, 54, 69-79.

Barber, B. K., Olsen, J. E., & Shagle, S. C. (1994).Associations between parental psychologicaland behavioral control and youth internalizedand externalized behaviors. Child Develop-ment, 65, 1120-1136.

Barber, B. K., & Shagle, S. C. (1992). Adolescentproblem behaviors: A social-ecological analy-sis. Family Perspective, 26, 493-515.

Baumrind, D. (1965). Parental control and paren-tal love. Children, 12, 230-234.

Baumrind, D. (1966). Effects of authoritative pa-rental control on child behavior. Child Devel-opment, 37, 857-907.

Baumrind, D. (1967). Child care practices ante-ceding three pattems of preschool behavior.Genetic Psychology Monographs, 75, 43-88.

Baumrind, D. (1968). Authoritarian vs. authorita-tive parental control. Adolescence, 3, 255-272.

Baumrind, D. (1971). Current pattems of parentalauthority. Developmental Psychology Mono-graphs, 4, 1-102.

Baumrind, D. (1978). Parental disciplinary prac-tices and social competence in children.Youth and Society, 9, 239-276.

Baumrind, D. (1991). The influence of parentingstyle on adolescent competence and sub-stance use. Journal of Early Adolescence 11,56-95.

Baumrind, D., & Black, A. E. (1967). Socializationpractices associated with dimensions of com-petence in preschool boys and girls. ChildDevelopment, 38, 291- 327.

Beavers, W. R. (1982). Healthy, midrange, and se-verely dysfunctional families. In F. Walsh(Ed.), Normal family processes (pp. 45-66).New York: Guilford.

Becker, W. C. (1964). Consequences of differentkinds of parental discipline. In M. L. Hoffnian& W. W. Hoffman (Eds.), Review of child de-velopment research (Vol. 1, pp. 169-208).New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Bowen, M. (1978). Family therapy in clinicalpractice. New York: Jason Aronson.

Brown, B. B., Mounts, N., Lamborn, S. D., &Steinberg, L. (1993). Parenting practices andpeer group affiliation in adolescence. ChildDevelopment, 63, 391-400.

Burbach, D. J., & Bourdin, C. M. (1986). Parent-


child relations and the etiology of depression:A review of methods and findings. CUnicalPsychology Review, 6, 133- 153.

Chapman, M., & Zahn-Waxler, C. (1981). Youngchildren's compliance and noncompliance toparental discipline in a natural setting. Un-published manuscript.

Cicchetti, D., & Toth, S. L. (Eds.). (1991). Inter-nalizing and externalizing expressions of dys-function. Rochester Symposium on Develop-mental Psychopathology (Vol. 2). Hillsdale,NJ: Erlbaum.

Collins, W. A., & Repinski, D. J. (1990). Relation-ships during adolescence: Continuity andchange in interpersonal perspective. In R.Montemayor, G. R. Adams, & T. P. Gullotta(Eds.), Personal relationships during adoles-cence (pp. 7 - 36). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Constantine, L. L. (1986). Family paradigms: Thepractice of theory in family therapy. NewYork: Guilford.

Coopersmith, S. (1967). The antecedents of self-esteem. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.

Darling, N., & Steinberg, L. (1993). Parentingstyle as context: An integrative model. Psy-chological Bulletin, 113, 487-496.

Dishion, T. J., & Andrews, D. W. (1995). Pre-venting escalation in problem behaviors withhigh-risk young adolescents: Immediate and1-year outcomes. Journal of Consulting andClinical Psychology, 63, 538-548.

Dishion, T. J., Gardner, K., Patterson, G. R., Reid,J. B., & Thibodeaux, S. (1983). The familyprocess code: A multidimensional system forobserving family interaction. Unpublishedcoding manual. (Available from Oregon So-cial Leaming Center, 207 E. 5th Ave., Suite202, Eugene, OR 97401)

Dishion, T. J., & Loeber, R. (1985). Adolescentmarijuana and alcohol use: The role of par-ents and peers revisited. American Journal ofDrug and Alcohol Ahuse, 11, 11-25.

Dornhusch, S. M., Carlsmith, J., Bushwall, S., Rit-ter, P., Liederman, P., Hastorf, A., & Gross, R.(1985). Single parents, extended households,and the control of adolescents. Child Devel-opment, 56, 326-341.

Erikson, E. E. (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis.New York: Norton.

Fauber, R., Forehand, R., Thomas, A. M., & Wier-son, J. (1990). A mediational model ofthe im-pact of marital conflict on adolescent adjust-ment in intact and divorced families: The roleof disrupted parenting. Child Development,6L 1112-1123.

Fisher, P., Shaffer, D., Wicks, J., & Piacentini, J.(1989). DISC for parent and child. New York:State Psychiatric Institute.

Forgatch, M. S. (1989). Pattems and outcome in


family problem solving: The disrupting effectof negative emotion./ourna? of Marriage andthe Family, 51, 115-124.

Freeman, D. L., & Barber, B. K. (1996, Novem-ber). Loneliness in adolescence: Implicationsfor family and development. Paper pres-entated at the annual meeting ofthe NationalCouncil on Family Relations, Kansas City,MO.

Grotevant, H. D., & Cooper, C. R. (1986). Individ-uation in family relationships: A perspectiveon individual differences in the developmentof identity and role-taking skill in adoles-cence. Human Development, 29, 82-100.

Grusec, J. E., & Goodnow, J. J. (1994). Impact ofparental discipline methods on the child's in-ternalization of values: A reconceptualizationof current points of view. Developmental Psy-chology, 30, 4 - 19.

Hauser, S. (1991). Families and their adolescents.New York: Free Press.

Hauser, S., Powers, S. I., Noam, G., Jacobson, A.,Weiss, B., & Follansbee, D. (1984). Familialcontexts of adolescent ego development.Child Development, 55, 195-213.

Hirschi, T. (1969). Causes of delinquency. Berke-ley: University of California Press.

Hoffinan, M. L. (1970). Moral development InP. H. Mussen (Ed.), Carmichael's manual ofchild psychology (Vol. 2). New York: Wiley.

Hoffinan, M. L. (1994). Discipline and internaliza-tion. Developmental Psychology, 30, 1, 26-28.

Jaccard, J., Turrisi, R., & Wan, D. K. (1990). Inter-action effects in multiple regression. New-bury Park, CA: Sage.

Jensen, B. S., & Barber, B. K. (1995, November).Eating disorders among female adolescents:An analysis of family predictors. Paper pre-sented at the annual meeting of the NationalCouncil on Family Relations, Portland.

Joreskog, K. G., & Sorbom, D. (1989). LISRELVII: A guide to the program and applications(2d ed.). Chicago: SPSS.

Kovacs, M. (1992). Children's depression inven-tory. Niagara Falls, NY: Multi-HealthSystems.

Loeher, R., & Dishion, T. J. (1984). Boys who Hghtat home and school: Family conditions influ-encing cross-setting consistency. Journal ofConsulting and Clinical Psychology, 52,759-768.

Maccohy, E. E., & Martin, J. A. (1983). Socializa-tion in the context of the family: Parent-childinteraction. In E. M. Hetherington (Ed.),P. H. Mussen (Series Ed.), Handbook of childpsychology: Vol. 4. Socialization, personal-ity, and social development (pp. 1—101). NewYork: Wiley.

MacKinnon, D. W. (1938). Violation of prohibi-

tions. In H. A. Murray (Ed.), Explorations inpersonality: A clinical and experimentalstudy of fifty men of college age (pp. 491-501). New York: Oxford University Press.

Marcia, J. E. (1980). Identity in adolescence. In J.-Adelson (Ed.), Handbook of adolescent psy-chology (pp. 159- 187). New York: Wiley.

Martin, B. (1975). Parent-child relations. In F. D.Horowitz (Ed.), Review of Child Develop-ment Research. Chicago: University of Chi-cago Press.

McCord, J. (1979). Some child-rearing anteced-ents of criminal behavior in adult men. Jour-nal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37,1477-1486.

McCord, J. (1990). Problem behaviors. In S. S.Feldman & G. Elliot (Eds.), At the threshold:The developing adolescent (pp. 414-430).Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Miller, B. C , McCoy, J. K., Olson, T. D., & Wal-lace, C. M. (1986). Parental control attemptsand adolescent sexual behavior. Journal ofMarriage and the Family, 48, 503-512.

Minuchin, S. (1974). Families and family therapy.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Olweus, D. (1980). Familial and temperamentaldeterminants of aggression behavior in ado-lescents—A causal analysis. DevelopmentalPsychology, 16, 644- 660.

Patterson, G. R. (1982). Coercive family processes.Eugene, OR: Castalia.

Patterson, G. R., Gapaldi, D., & Bank, L. (1989).An early starter model for predicting delin-quency. In D. Pepler & K. H. Rubin (Eds.),The development and treatment of childhoodaggression (pp. 139-168). Hillsdale, NJ:Erlbaum.

Patterson, G. R., & Stouthamer-Loeber, M. (1984).The correlation of family management prac-tices and delinquency. Child Development,55, 1299-1307.

Pearlin, L. I., Lieberman, M. A., Meneghan,E. G., & Mullan, J. T. (1981). The stress pro-cess. Journal of Health and Social Behavior,22, 337-356.

Peterson, G. W. (1995). Autonomy and connected-ness in families. In R. D. Day, K. R. Gilbert,B. H. Settles, & W. R. Burr (Eds.), Researchand theory in family science (pp. 20- 41). Pa-ciflc Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Pulkinnen, L. (1982). Self-control and continuityfrom childhood to adolescence. In P. B. Baltes& O. G. Brim (Eds.), Life-span developmentand behavior (Vol. 4, pp. 63-105). New York:Academic Press.

Reckless, W. (1967). The crime problem. NewYork: Appleton-Gentury-Grofts.

Reiss, R. (1951). Delinquency as the failure of so-cial and personal controls. American Socio-logical Review, 16, 196-207.


Robin, A. L., & Foster, S. L. (1989). Negotiatingparent-adolescent conflict. New York: Guil-ford.

Rollins, B. G., & Thomas, D. L. (1979). Parentalsupport, power, and control techniques in thesocialization of children. In W. R. Burr, R.Hill, F. I. Nye, & 1. L. Reiss (Eds.), Contem-porary theories about the family: Vol. 1. Re-search based theories (pp. 317- 364). NewYork: Free Press.

Sahatelli, R. M., & Mazor, A. (1985). Differentia-tion, individuation, and identity formation:The integration of family system and indi-vidual developmental perspectives. Adoles-cence, 20, 619-633.

Schaefer, E. S. (1959). A circumplex model for ma-ternal behavior. Journal of Abnormal and So-cial Psychology, 59, 226-235.

Schaefer, E. S. (1965a). Children's reports of pa-rental behavior: An inventory. Child Devel-opment, 36, 413-424.

Schaefer, E. S. (1965b). A conflgurational analysisof children's reports of parent behavior. Jour-nal of Consulting Psychology, 29, 552-557.

Schludermann, E., & Schludermann, S. (1970).Replicability of factors in children's report ofparent behavior (CRPBI). Journal of Psychol-ogy, 76, 239- 249.

Seligman, M. E., & Peterson, C. (1986). A leamedhelplessness perspective on childhood de-pression: Theory and research. In M. Rutter,C. E. Izard, & P. B. Read (Eds.), Depressionin young people (pp. 223-249). New York:Guilford.

Siegelman, M. (1965). Gollege student personalitycorrelates of early parent-child relationships.Journal of Consulting Psychology, 29, 558-564.

Steinberg, L. (1990). Autonomy, conflict, and har-mony in the family relationship. In S. S. Feld-man & G. R. Elliot (Eds.), At the threshold:The developing adolescent (pp. 255-276).Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Steinberg, L., Elmen, J. D., & Mounts, N. S.(1989). Authoritative parenting, psychosocialmaturity, and academic success among ado-lescents. Child Development, 60, 1424-1436.

Steinberg, L., Lamborn, S. D., Dornbusch, S. M.,& Darling, N. (1992). Impact of parentingpractices on adolescent achievement: Author-itative parenting, school involvement, and en-couragement to succeed. Child Development,63, 1266-1281.

Steinberg, L., Mounts, N. S., Lamborn, S. D., &Dombusch, S. M. (1991). Authoritative par-enting and adolescent adjustment across vari-ous ecological niches. Joumai of Research onAdolescence, 1, 19-36.

Stierlin, H. (1974). Separating parents and ado-lescents. New York: Quadrangle.

Volk, R. J., Edwards, D. W., Lewis, R. A., & Spren-kle, D. H. (1989). The assessment of adapt-ability and cohesion in families of adolescentdrug abusers and non-abusers. Family Rela-tions, 38, 266-272.

Youniss, J., & Smollar, J. (1985). Adolescent rela-tions with mothers, fathers, and friends. Chi-cago: University of Chicago Press.

Documents

Parental Psychological Control: Revisiting a …wbeyers/scripties2011/artikels/...by way of explaining, expressing curiosity, and engaging in joint problem solving. On the other hand,