Parental Psychological Aggression and School-Aged Children’s Problem Behavior: Mediating Roles of Children’s Anger and Sadness Management

  • XING Xiaopei ,
  • JIAO Menghan ,
  • XIAO Yuyuan ,
  • HU Xia
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  • 1. School of Psychology, Research Center for Child Development, Beijing Key Laboratory of Learning and Cognition, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100048;
    2. Zhenshan Primary School of Zhifu District, Yantai 264010

Received date: 2022-01-03

  Online published: 2022-07-20

Abstract

The current study aimed to explore the potential differences in the emotional mechanism between parental psychological aggression and children’s problem behavior. A total of 660 children in grades 3~5 of primary school and their parents participated in the questionnaire survey. The results showed that: 1) Paternal psychological aggression was positively correlated with children’s externalizing problem behavior. Maternal psychological aggression was positively correlated with children’s internalizing problem behavior. 2) Anger dysregulation mediated the relationship between maternal and paternal psychological aggression and children’s externalizing problem behavior; sadness dysregulation mediated the relationship between maternal psychological aggression and children’s internalizing problem behavior; anger coping mediated the relationships between maternal psychological aggression and children’s internalizing and externalizing problem behavior. The results indicate that the emotional mechanism of parents’ psychological aggression on children’s problem behavior varies according to children’s emotion types and emotion management strategies.

Cite this article

XING Xiaopei , JIAO Menghan , XIAO Yuyuan , HU Xia . Parental Psychological Aggression and School-Aged Children’s Problem Behavior: Mediating Roles of Children’s Anger and Sadness Management[J]. Studies of Psychology and Behavior, 2022 , 20(4) : 479 -486 . DOI: 10.12139/j.1672-0628.2022.04.007

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