Elsevier

Personality and Individual Differences

Volume 134, 1 November 2018, Pages 182-189
Personality and Individual Differences

Parent and child antisocial problems: Moderation by emerging adult religiosity and gender

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.06.014Get rights and content

Abstract

Parental antisocial problems have a strong influence upon their children's antisocial problems but studies suggest that personal religiosity can serve as a protective factor. No studies have yet examined personal religiosity in connection to parental and child antisocial problems. The current study asked 435 emerging adults aged 18 to 25 years attending a large Southern United States university to report upon the antisocial problems of their parents via the Antisocial Problems DSM subscale of the Adult Behavior Checklist (ABCL), and their own antisocial problems on the Antisocial Problems DSM subscale of the Adult Self-Report (ASR) and religiosity on the Stearns-McKinney Assessment of Religious Traits (SMART). Structural equation modeling was used to measure whether personal religiosity and gender (parent and participant) moderated the relationship between perceived parental and child antisocial problems. Results indicated that emerging adult religiosity was associated with a weaker the association between maternal and emerging adult antisocial problems for sons and daughters; however, emerging adult religiosity was associated with a weaker association between paternal and emerging adult antisocial problems only for daughters. For male participants, emerging adult religiosity served as a stronger moderator between maternal and emerging adult antisocial problems than paternal and emerging adult problems, indicating a 3-way interaction by parental gender.

Section snippets

Parent and child antisocial problems

Many studies have illustrated an association between parental and child antisocial behaviors (Jackson & Beaver, 2015). These results are aligned with Social Learning Theory, suggesting that children who observe aggressive behavior are more likely to display aggressive behavior as well (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1961; Garcia, Restubog, Kiewitz, Scott, & Tang, 2014). For example, parents model behaviors within the family such as antisocial behaviors. Additionally, it is in the family environment

Current study

The current study contributes to the literature by examining how antisocial problems of emerging adults are associated with the perceived antisocial problems of their parents as well as their own personal religiosity. Specifically, given the vast amount of literature which suggests religiosity can serve as a mental health buffer (Dean et al., 2010), the current study investigated whether personal religiosity served as a buffer (i.e., moderated) for the relationship between parental and child

Participants

Participants were recruited from a general Psychology Research Pool made up of Introduction to Psychology students who are given class credit in exchange for their participation in various studies via a brief description of the project stating that participants would fill out questionnaires about religiosity and their family.

The sample (N = 435; 295 female, 122 male) consisted of emerging adults aged 18 to 25 years (M = 20.62, SD = 1.76) who were attending a large Southern United States

Results

See Table 1 for descriptive statistics. Table 2 shows correlations for observed variables. The original measurement model with latent emerging adult religiosity as described above and shown in Fig. 1 provided good model fit (SRMR = 0.01, CFI = 0.97, TLI = 0.96). All factor loadings exceeded 0.79 (all ps < .001), indicating good convergent validity. Results were controlled for parental religiosity by loading the control variables onto the dependent variable of emerging adult antisocial problems

Discussion

The current study examined the role of emerging adult religiosity in the relationship between parental and child antisocial problems in sons and daughters. Specifically, the current study contributes to previous literature by examining both maternal and paternal variables as well as the role of personal religiosity, and used participant gender as a moderating variable. The following discussion will focus on the key findings of the current study that emerging adult religiosity was associated

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