Through an anxious lens: The roles of adolescents' anxiety symptoms in conditioning the relational consequences of parental responses to negative emotions through shaping adolescents' appraisals of parental responses

Abstract

Grounded in the cognitive-affective models of anxiety and the emotion socialization theory, the present study aimed to examine how adolescents' anxiety symptoms may moderate the associations of parental earlier responses to adolescents' negative emotions with the subsequent adolescent-parent relationship quality, and whether the moderating roles of adolescents' anxiety would be mediated by adolescents' appraisals of parental responses. Two-wave longitudinal data were obtained from 335 Chinese adolescent-parent dyads (41.8% boys, M_age = 16.08 years; 72.2% mothers, M_age = 42.05 years). Results of mediated moderation model analyses indicated that adolescent anxiety symptoms (Time 1) negatively predicted adolescents' positive appraisals of supportive responses and didactic talk responses to adolescents' negative emotions (Time 2). Nevertheless, adolescent anxiety symptoms (Time 1) only moderated the association between parental didactic talk and teaching (Time 1) and parent–adolescent relationship quality (Time 2), such that didactic talk and teaching predicted better subsequent relationship quality only among adolescents with low levels of anxiety symptoms. This moderation effect was partially explained by adolescents' appraisals of didactic talk and teaching, as adolescents with lower levels of anxiety symptoms tended to interpret this response more benignly, which, in turn, predicted better subsequent parent–adolescent relationship quality. In conclusion, the relational implications of parental didactic talk and teaching may depend partly on adolescents' anxiety symptoms and their appraisals of such parental responses, highlighting the importance of considering adolescents' individual characteristics and subjective interpretations in parental emotion socialization.