Research Project
6624314
The goals of this project are (a) to extend our understanding of the regulation and expression of negative emotion by examining predictors of middle adolescents' relationship functioning and (b) to predict individual differences in adolescents' (i.e., juniors and seniors in high school) psychological well-being is a function of their romantic relationships. One hundred "cases" will be recruited. Each case will consist of the target adolescent and his/her mother, father, dating partner, and same-gender best friend. Self-report and observational measures will be used. This project combines attachment and social learning approaches to the development of individual differences. Goal A is to examine similarities among the emotional regulatory processes adolescents observe in their parents' marriages and the processes adolescents employ in their relations with parents, peers. and romantic partners. Three aspects of emotion regulation and functioning will be examined: attachment, meeting one's emotional needs through support seeking and conflict resolution skills and meeting the partner's needs through support provision and relationship maintenance skills. Adolescents' emotional regulation and functioning in romantic relationships will be predicted from (1) the relationship maintenance, conflict resolution, and social support skills modeled by parents in their marriages in their parents' relationships with themselves, and (2) the emotional regulatory processes adolescents employ in relations with their parents and their same-gender peers. Goal B will examine individual differences in adolescents' psychological well-being (i.e., self-esteem, depressive symptoms, risk-taking) as a function of the quality of their romantic relationships and the emotional regulatory processes employed by the themselves and their romantic partners. Attachment style and relationship satisfaction will be examined as potential moderators of the association between partner's emotional regulatory processes and adolescent well-being. The proposed project will extend current understanding by (1) combining attachment and social learning approaches to understanding adolescent romantic relationships, (2) using multi-source, multi-method measures of predictors and outcomes, (3) integrating the literature on marital and dating relations with the developmental literature on adolescents social relationships, and (4) examining contextual variability in the association between romantic competence and psychological well-being from individual and dyadic perspectives.
