Open AccessBeyond the “self” in self-regulation: Family interaction modulates situational self-control by adolescent drug users.
Author(s) -
Bonita Sur,
Audrey Cleary,
Michael J. Rohrbaugh,
Emilio Ferrer,
David A. Sbarra
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of family psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.138
H-Index - 120
eISSN - 1939-1293
pISSN - 0893-3200
DOI - 10.1037/fam0000598
Subject(s) - self control , psychology , situational ethics , self administration , self report study , self disclosure , self efficacy , developmental psychology , social relation , psychotherapist , clinical psychology , social psychology , medicine
Prevailing views of adolescent self-regulation (ASR) as a relatively stable disposition or skill that an individual possesses in various degrees stand in contrast to a complementary, situational perspective from family systems theory casting ASR as intertwined with ongoing family processes and malleable depending on interpersonal interactions. Using observational data from a large, ethnically diverse sample of substance-using adolescents ( N = 458), the current study examines the social context of ASR across 3 increasingly conflictual family interaction tasks. Coders rated ASR and 3 concurrent family interaction patterns: enmeshment, conflict avoidance, and negative affect. ASR declined across the 3 tasks, and independent of this systematic change, family-level negative affect in the first task exerted a strong lagged statistical effect on subsequent declines in ASR. The findings are consistent with family systems theory in both the context-dependent nature of ASR behavior and the modulating role of family interaction. In addition to its well-established dispositional properties, ASR may be of interest as a context-specific and potentially modifiable dependent variable. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).