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Maternal reporting of child psychopathology: The effect of defensive responding

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Abstract

Defensive Responding is a term to describe strategies used to control the perceptions others have of oneself. The attempt to control information in an effort to influences another’s opinion can serve as a personal or social goal-directed behavior. This behavior has implications for how others perceive, evaluate, and treat them. There is a wealth of research on parental characteristics that can influence responding about children, and there is literature showing that certain motives, goals, and personality characteristics, such as defensive responding, can affect caregiver’s self-report. However, research has yet to bridge these lines of research and examine whether defensive responding impacts parents’ responding about their children. The current study explored differences in responding between mothers who do and do not engage in defensive responding on a widely-used measure of child psychopathology: the Child-Behavior Checklist, while controlling for maternal psychopathology, child race, age, and gender. Results indicated that mothers who engaged in defensive responding responded more defensively about their children on the Total score of the Child-Behavior Checklist. Specifically, mothers reported reduced internalizing, anxiety/depression, withdrawal/depression, externalizing, inattention, delinquency, and aggression symptoms. Exploratory analyses indicated that the relationship between maternal depressive symptoms and child psychopathology was mediated by maternal defensive responding.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Louisiana State University, 236 Audubon Hall, Baton Rouge, LA, 70803, USA

    Peter J. Castagna, Megan E. Lilly & Thompson E. Davis III

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  1. Peter J. Castagna
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  2. Megan E. Lilly
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  3. Thompson E. Davis III
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Correspondence to Peter J. Castagna.

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Castagna, P.J., Lilly, M.E. & Davis, T.E. Maternal reporting of child psychopathology: The effect of defensive responding. Curr Psychol 39, 315–324 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-017-9765-7

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