A Daily Diary Study of the Reciprocal Relation between Parental Psychological Aggression and Adolescent Anxiety in China

The daily reciprocal relations between parental psychological aggression and adolescent anxiety and the heterogeneity, i.e., whether these relations vary across different adolescents, remain unclear. This study examined this issue with a 15-day daily diary study among 326 Chinese adolescents (M_age = 14.53 years, SD = 0.60, 47.2% girls). Dynamic structural equation models revealed that parental psychological aggression co-fluctuated with adolescent anxiety within a day. For lagged associations, only father-driven effects were supported but not mother-driven effects, whereas child-driven effects were supported for both parents. These within-person associations were heterogeneous across adolescents. Moreover, adolescents with more parental psychological aggression reported higher anxiety. This study revealed the reciprocal relations between parental psychological aggression and adolescent anxiety at the micro timescale and also highlighted that the within-person associations were heterogeneous across different adolescents.