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Emotional Variability in Mother-Adolescent Conflict Interactions and Internalizing Problems of Mothers and Adolescents: Dyadic and Individual Processes

Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology volume 43, pages 339–353 (2015)Cite this article

An Erratum to this article was published on 28 August 2014

Abstract

Emotional variability reflects the ability to flexibly switch among a broad range of positive and negative emotions from moment-to-moment during interactions. Emotional variability during mother-adolescent conflict interactions is considered to be important for healthy socio-emotional functioning of mothers and adolescents. The current observational study examined whether dyadic emotional variability, maternal emotional variability, and adolescent emotional variability during conflict interactions in early adolescence predicted mothers’ and adolescents’ internalizing problems five years later. We used data from 92 mother-adolescent dyads (Mage T1 = 13.05; 65.20 % boys) who were videotaped at T1 while discussing a conflict. Emotional variability was derived from these conflict interactions and it was observed for mother-adolescent dyads, mothers and adolescents separately. Mothers and adolescents also completed questionnaires in early adolescence (T1) and five years later in late adolescence (T6) on mothers’ internalizing problems, and adolescents’ anxiety and depressive symptoms. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that less dyadic emotional variability in early adolescence predicted relative increases in mothers’ internalizing problems, adolescents’ depressive symptoms, and adolescents’ anxiety symptoms from early to late adolescence. Less maternal emotional variability only predicted relative increases in adolescents’ anxiety symptoms over time. The emotional valence (e.g., types of emotions expressed) of conflict interactions did not moderate the results. Taken together, findings highlighted the importance of considering limited emotional variability during conflict interactions in the development, prevention, and treatment of internalizing problems of mothers and adolescents.

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. We checked whether results were the same when using the duration of positive affect and the duration of negative affect instead of the emotional valence and similar results were found. In order to reduce the number of variables in our analysis we decided to retain the emotional valence in current analyses.

  2. Results of these analyses can be obtained from the first author upon request.

  3. Results of these analyses can be obtained from the first author upon request.

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Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Child Development and Education, Research Priority Area Yield, University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box 94208, 1090 GE, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Daniëlle Van der Giessen & Wim Meeus

  2. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    William W. Hale III & Susan Branje

  3. Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

    Tom Hollenstein

  4. VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Hans M. Koot

  5. Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Wim Meeus

Authors
  1. Daniëlle Van der Giessen
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  2. Tom Hollenstein
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  3. William W. Hale III
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  4. Hans M. Koot
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  5. Wim Meeus
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  6. Susan Branje
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniëlle Van der Giessen.

Additional information

Data of the RADAR study were used. RADAR has been financially supported by main grants from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (GB-MAGW 480-03-005), and Stichting Achmea Slachtoffer en Samenleving (SASS), and various other grants from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, the VU University of Amsterdam and Utrecht University.

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Van der Giessen, D., Hollenstein, T., Hale, W.W. et al. Emotional Variability in Mother-Adolescent Conflict Interactions and Internalizing Problems of Mothers and Adolescents: Dyadic and Individual Processes. J Abnorm Child Psychol 43, 339–353 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-014-9910-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-014-9910-9

Keywords

  • Emotional variability
  • Mother-adolescent interactions
  • Conflicts
  • Internalizing problems
  • State space grids