No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Romantic and parental attachment, psychosocial risk, and personal agency in emerging adulthood
Abstract
This study focuses on emerging adults’ personal agency, an individual feature associated with enhanced
adaptive and resilient developmental trajectories. The two objectives were to explore the role of
demographic, psychosocial risk, and relational factors in predicting personal agency and analyze whether
romantic attachment mediates the connection between parental attachment and personal agency. The sample
consisted of 607 Portuguese emerging adults aged between 18 and 30 years. Structural equation modeling
results suggest that men are more likely to exhibit higher levels of personal agency than women. Trustful
romantic relations and good paternal emotional bonds are associated with greater personal agency, while
dependent romantic relations and maternal relations, characterized by inhibition of exploration, are
associated with lower personal agency. Moreover, in romantic relations, trust, unlike dependence, partially
mediates the association between parental attachment and personal agency. These findings are discussed
based on attachment and self-determination theories, considering the importance of secure relationships for
agency and autonomy in personal actions. This study provides important evidence for the influencers and
mediators of personal agency, contributing to a better understanding of this individual capacity.
... In other words, adults who are actively seeking meaning in life tend to be more action-orientated and engaged in their lives (Cote, 2002;Cote, 2016;Schwartz et al., 2005). Emerging adults with high personal agency tend to set the life purposes, possess high self-esteem, self-efficacy in reasonable level, and internal locus of control (Cote, 2002;Cote & Schwartz, 2002;Nunes et al., 2022). ...
... This demonstrates that the difference which happened in favor of experimental group, between the experimental group and the control group in terms of emerging adults' levels of finding the meaning in life and their active personality traits is not a coincidence and is a result of the program's effectiveness. The findings of the research are supported by another study by Nunes et al. (2022), in which it was shown that agency is of great importance for emerging people to set life objectives, boost self-esteem, foster self-efficacy, and have an internal focus of control. ...
In this study, it was aimed to examine the effectiveness of the 8-session group psychological counseling based on logotherapy, which was developed to increase the level of meaning in life and active personality traits of emerging adults. This research employed a pre-test, post-test, control group experimental design and was conducted online on emerging adults. The experimental group and the research control group were formed with 10 participants among the emerging adults who voluntarily agreed to participate in the research. The study group consisted of 20 emerging adults, aged 18-25; 10 (3 men, 7 women) were in the experimental group, and 10 (4 men, 6 women) were in the control group. Purpose in Life Scale and Multi-Measure Agentic Personality Scale were applied to the experimental and control groups as pre-test and post-test. The experimental group of 10 participants received around 90 minutes of 8 sessions of logotherapy-based, spiritually oriented group counseling; however, no such application was made to the control group. The nonparametric Mann Whitney U test was conducted to determine whether the scores of the experimental and control groups on the multi-measure agentic personality and life purpose scales changed significantly between the pre- and post-tests. The non-parametric Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test was applied to determine whether there was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups’ life purpose, multi-measure agentic personality scale post-test scores, and pre-test scores. The practice of spiritually oriented group counseling based on logotherapy was found to be statistically significant at the levels of finding the meaning in life and multi measure agentic personality traits, and the findings were analyzed in the context of the literature. This study tested the efficacy of this program, and it reveals the findings on emerging adults that professionals studying in various disciplines could use this program in a functional way in their studies.
... The correlation between attachment bonds formed in childhood and the interpersonal relationships individuals establish in adulthood has been empirically demonstrated, including their relational strategies and ways of bonding (Díaz-Mosquera et al., 2024;Neumann and Rohmann, 2024). However, some researchers maintain that adult attachment, influenced by parental styles experienced in childhood, may significantly influence the development of emotional dependence patterns within romantic relationships (Nunes et al., 2021) and the perpetuation of abusive dynamics (Valle and Moral, 2018). Individuals entrenched in relationships marked by emotional dependence could have developed an insecure attachment style, such as anxiety or worry, during their childhood. ...
The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between attachment styles and emotional dependence in adulthood. Attachment formed in childhood often continues into adulthood, influencing the quality of adult relationships, especially romantic ones. Insecure attachment between children and parents is linked to negative outcomes in adult relationships, such as poor relationship quality and infidelity. Recent societal changes have added new pressures on individuals and their relationships. Emotional dependence has emerged as a disorder rooted in emotional reliance, emphasizing the need to explore the underlying factors of dependent relationships. The study included 1,383 participants aged 25 to 60 from Quito, Ecuador, who completed online questionnaires on relationship styles and emotional dependency. Differences in gender and age were found in both areas, confirming some findings from earlier studies. Additionally, two independent predictive models were identified: preoccupied attachment explained 25% of the emotional dependence, and fearful attachment explained 14%. These results suggest that individuals with low self-confidence and feelings of unworthiness are more likely to develop emotional dependence. These new insights make an important contribution to the field. The study also suggests intervention areas for clinical and real-life settings to improve well-being based on these findings.
... Higher levels of avoidance can highlight feelings of discomfort with proximity and dependence and fear of intimacy, which can foster a negative view of the future (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2019;Simpson & Rholes, 2017). Although scarce, some studies underline the importance of secure romantic attachment on exploratory behaviors concerning future orientation (Feeney & Collins, 2019;Kumar & Mattanah, 2016;Nunes et al., 2022). For instance, Kvitkovičová et al. (2017) found that the romantic partner was the most relevant attachment figure in career-related decision-making processes. ...
The characteristics of Western societies pose significant challenges to how emerging adults view their futures. In the present study, we analyzed the associations between romantic attachment, self-regulation, and future expectations of emerging adults controlling the sex and age of participants. More specifically, we analyzed the moderating role of goal-setting, decision-making, and learning from mistakes (self-regulation dimensions) in the links between trustful, dependent, avoidant, and ambivalent romantic relationships and future expectations. The sample, collected by convenience in Portugal, includes 571 emerging adults (76.2% were female and 23.8% were male) aged between 18 and 30 years (M = 23.31; SD = 3.35). Our results indicate significant associations between trust, dependent, avoidant, and ambivalent romantic relationships, with different dimensions of future expectations. Findings indicated that goal-setting moderates the association between dependent and avoidant romantic relationships and pessimism. We discuss these findings based on attachment theory, considering the relevance of emotional bonds and self-regulatory processes in future planning.
... Social work is already striving to bridge the micro and macro divide (Abramovitz & Sherraden, 2016). Will the profession now address the conceptual problem of eclecticism (Tucker, 1996) by linking the theories of human need with theories of human rights and social justice and with a limited set of key theories with strong social work roots, such as empowerment (Collins, 2000;Emmel, 2017;Gilbert, 1974;Gutiérrez, 1990;Gutiérrez et al., 1998;Simon, 1994;Solomon, 1976), ecosystems (Gitterman et al., 2020), theories of role relationships and social relationships (Marwell & Hage, 1970;Nunes et al., 2022), the other mini-theories of SDT (Ryan & Deci, 2017), and emerging social justice-oriented forms of behavioral approaches (Jason et al., 2021;Saini & Vance, 2020)? ...
Sense of personal agency (SPA) is crucial for adolescents’ psychosocial adjustment and well-being. The relationships with parents and peers, as well as the adolescent’s sex, have been suggested as important correlates of adolescents’ SPA. Nevertheless, no prior study has adopted a gender perspective to analyze how the intertwining of relationships between parents and peers relates to adolescent’s sense of agency. The current study investigates whether attachment to peers mediates the links between attachment to parents and SPA and whether these links are equal for boys and girls. The sample includes 1119 Portuguese adolescents (56.2% girls; 43.8% boys) aged 14 to 19. Structural equation modeling results suggest that attachment to peers is more strongly associated with boys’ SPA than girls. Results also indicate that regardless of adolescent sex, the quality of the emotional bond with the mother, but not the father, is positively associated with adolescents’ SPA. Furthermore, the results suggest that attachment to peers mediates the links between attachment to parents and adolescents’ SPA. Quality relationships with the adolescent’s different-sex parental figures (mother-son, father-daughter) are associated with higher-quality peer relationships, which are associated with a stronger SPA. On the contrary, inhibition relationships with the adolescent’s same-sex parental figure (mother-daughter, father-son) are associated with lower quality in adolescent’s peer relationships, which is associated with a lower SPA. These findings underline the importance of considering a gender perspective to understand better the role of family and peer contexts in the adolescent SPA.
A new 4-group model of attachment styles in adulthood is proposed. Four prototypic attachment patterns are defined using combinations of a person's self-image (positive or negative) and image of others (positive or negative). In Study 1, an interview was developed to yield continuous and categorical ratings of the 4 attachment styles. Intercorrelations of the attachment ratings were consistent with the proposed model. Attachment ratings were validated by self-report measures of self-concept and interpersonal functioning. Each style was associated with a distinct profile of interpersonal problems, according to both self- and friend-reports. In Study 2, attachment styles within the family of origin and with peers were assessed independently. Results of Study 1 were replicated. The proposed model was shown to be applicable to representations of family relations; Ss' attachment styles with peers were correlated with family attachment ratings.
Identification of individuals at risk of hypertension development based on socio-economic status have been inconclusive, due to variable definitions of low socio-economic status. We investigated whether educational status of individuals or their parents predicts prevalent hypertension in young adult population, by analyzing data of more than 37,000 non-institutionalized subjects from Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2008 to 2017. Although low educational status of individual subjects was robustly associated with elevation of systolic blood pressure and increased prevalence of hypertension in general population, its impact on prevalent hypertension differed across age subgroups, and was remarkably attenuated in young adults. Parental educational status was significantly associated with prevalent hypertension in young adults, but not or only marginally in elderly population. Low parental educational status was also associated with high sodium intake in young adults, irrespective of subject’s own educational status. These collectively indicate that parental educational status, rather than individual’s own educational status, better and independently predicts prevalent hypertension in young adults, and that young adults with low parental educational status are prone to intake more sodium, possibly contributing to the increased risk of hypertension development. We expect that our findings could help define young individuals at risk of high sodium intake and hypertension.
Sense of Agency (SoA) is the subject of growing attention. It corresponds to the capacity to claim authorship over an action, associate specific consequences with a specific action, and it has been claimed to be a key point in the development of consciousness. It can be measured using the Sense of Agency Scale (SoAS), originally proposed by Tapal et al. (2017), who distinguished it into two-factor: Sense of Positive Agency (SoPA) and Sense of Negative Agency (SoNA). This study reports on the first adaptation of the SoAS into another language, French. For this French version of the Sense of Agency Scale (F-SoAS), we analyzed responses from a sample of 517 native French-speakers. Our results indicate that the scale has good psychometric properties. Factor analysis confirms the same two-factor model as Tapal et al. (2017). However, some items were removed due to insufficient loadings with factors, leading to a short version of the scale (7-item). Furthermore, we observed gender differences that are consistent with findings in the literature. Specifically, women report higher SoNA scores and lower SoPA scores than men. We conclude by discussing possible uses and future directions for the scale.
Despite the extant literature, our understanding of the relative influence of attachment figures on multiple indices of socioemotional outcomes, especially during emerging adulthood, has been incomplete. The goal of the present study was to explicate the direct and indirect relations among maternal attachment, paternal attachment, peer attachment, internalizing symptomatology, and prosocial behaviors in a sample of emerging adults. Measures of maternal and paternal attachment, peer attachment, internalizing symptomatology (depression, anxiety, and stress) and multidimensional prosocial behaviors (altruistic, anonymous, dire, emotional, compliant, and dire) were administered to 189 college students (49% female; Mage = 18.82 years; 70% White). Maternal attachment was directly related to peer attachment and internalizing symptomatology. Peer attachment mediated the relations between maternal attachment and all outcomes except for public and anonymous prosocial behaviors. Paternal attachment failed to predict any outcomes when considered in the same model as maternal attachment. Further, emerging adult gender did not moderate any paths in the model. Taken together, the current findings underscore the continued importance of parent and peer attachment on mental health and socioemotional competencies during the transition into adulthood.
Objectives
The Father and Mother Attachment Questionnaire (FMAQ) is a 30-item self-report measure developed for assessing adolescents’ and young adults’ representations of attachment relationships with each parental figure separately, across three dimensions: quality of emotional bond, separation anxiety, and inhibition of exploration and individuality. Five studies were conducted to develop a short-form of FMAQ and to examine whether this new short measure presented with fit psychometric properties.
Method
Study 1 involved Item Response Theory (IRT) analyses with 563 Portuguese adolescents and aim to select the best items to include in the short-form of the FMAQ. Studies 2 to 5 aimed to replicate the reliability and factor structure found in Study 1 through confirmatory factor analysis on independent samples of adolescents, young adults and adults.
Results
The IRT results suggested including 15-items in the short-form of FMAQ. The results provide support for the adjustment of the short factor structure, internal consistency, and invariance measurement (among gender of participants and parental roles), and predictive validity across different samples.
Conclusions
The results obtained in the five studies indicate that the short-form FMAQ is a reliable instrument to assess the quality of attachment to parents in adolescence and emerging adulthood, as well as to evaluate adults’ perceptions of their parents as attachment figures during their adolescence. Thus, we suggest this short-form as a promising research tool for researchers quickly to assess attachment to parents in these ages taking into account a three-dimensional approach.
Previous researches suggest that individuals with different attachment styles practice different styles of love, but these do not consider the role of trust, communication, and closeness to the father and mother separately. The main aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship and the impact of parental attachment, through the analysis of the participants’ self-reported account and romantic styles in Italians emerging adulthood by using a multidimensional approach (trust, communication, closeness to father and mother). The 296 participants (19–29 years; 50.7% males) rated items of information on a questionnaire, regarding their perspective of their attachment to their mother/father and attitude toward love. Using a variable-centred approach and a person-centred approach, the results suggest that the respondents differed in levels of parental attachment or love styles and that the present parental attachment has a positive impact on their romantic relationship. It is possible to estimate romantic relationships and prevent manic relationships based on the individual’s current perceptions of their attachment to the father or mother. The role of parents and paternal attachment, are still fundamental in Italian young adults. The role of communication with the mother, in particular, is controversial and should be further investigated.
Although there is a growing interest in the concept of personal agency in adolescence and emerging adulthood, few efforts have been made to operationalize the concept. This study proposes and tests an assessment model of personal agency. The sample is composed of 692 emerging adults aged 18 to 30 years. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) revealed adequate adjustment indices confirming a model composed by goal setting, self-efficacy, decision-making, and optimism. Second order CFA confirmed that the four factors converge to a latent variable that we named "personal agency". Measurement invariance across participants’ gender and age, as well as two levels of sociocultural risk, was ensured. Future studies should gather further construct validity for the model.
This article addresses the ongoing debate on the role of agency and structure in shaping the transition from school to work. Drawing on theories of life-course sociology and life-span psychology an integrated social-ecological developmental approach is presented, conceptualizing individual agency as a relational and intentional process that evolves through interactions with the wider socio-cultural context. Agency is understood as a multi-dimensional construct, influenced by multiple proximal and distal social circumstances that channel the manifestation of agency by offering distinct transition pathways. The article specifies the ways how social structures support and constrain the development of agency, and asks if individual agency can overcome social constraints, and to what extent and in what circumstances can agency be most effective? It is argued that agency is most influential (a) when social structures are flexible, enabling switching between tracks; (b) during critical windows of opportunity, such as during transitions from one educational track to another or from education into paid employment; (c) in situations when individuals leave a pre-structured path; (d) when intentions are closely matched to individual competencies; and (e) when socio-economic disadvantage is not overpowering. The analysis presented in this paper should enable researchers to expand and deepen their understanding of the role of structure and agency in shaping school-to-work transitions and inform empirical research on the topic.
This chapter shows that agency and communion are essential to understanding the psychology of gender. Gender stereotypes, in their descriptive and prescriptive forms, follow from a societal division of labor whereby women tend to be concentrated in communally demanding roles and men in agentically demanding roles. People’s inferences of communal and agentic traits underlying the typical role behaviors of women and men yield gender stereotypes. These stereotypes in turn can enhance or compromise the ability of women and men to occupy and succeed in social roles that demand agentic or communal qualities. To the extent that people internalize stereotypes pertaining to their gender, they gain gender identities by which women regard themselves as especially communal and men as especially agentic. In addition, these identities and related personal goals regulate the attraction of each sex to social roles that afford opportunities to meet communal or agentic goals.
This paper details the ways that gender structures our senses of agency on an enactive framework. While it is common to discuss how gender influences higher, narrative levels of cognition, as with the formulation of goals and in considerations about our identities, it is less clear how gender structures our more immediate, embodied processes, such as the minimal sense of agency. While enactivists often acknowledge that gender and other aspects of our socio-cultural situatedness shape our cognitive processes, there is little work on how this shaping takes place. In order to provide such an account, I will first look at the minimal and narrative senses of agency (Gallagher 2012), a distinction that draws from work on minimal and narrative selves (Zahavi 2010). Next I will explain the influence of the narrative sense of agency on the minimal sense of agency through work on intention-formation (Pacherie 2007). After a discussion of the role of gender in the narrative sense of agency, I'll expand on work by Haslanger (2012) and Young (1980) to offer three ways in which gender influences the minimal sense of agency, showing the effect that gender has on how we perceive our possibilities for interaction in a phenomenologically immediate, pre-reflective manner.
Although long neglected, the themes of inequality and the differentiating consequences of structurally organized constraints and opportunities for individuals have recently become a major theme of scholars in aging and life-course studies. Beyond the evidence of intracohort patterns of cumulative dis/advantage in health and resources, recent societal trends of increasing inequality have added another dimension of theoretical interest and practical urgency to these concerns. These trends have been noteworthy both for the dramatic increase and for their planetary breadth, affecting Asia and Europe as well as America. Both researchers and popular writers have observed the growing importance of the precariat, an emerging subpopulation with tenuous connection to the primary economy encompasses individuals of every age. At the same time, individual agency and related concepts such as “choice” and “decision-making” continue regularly to appear as featured terms in studies of life course and related fields. Such concepts accord a strong explanatory force to the individual, and continue to be widely accepted as unproblematic and legitimate. This article examines the relevance of these two domains of life-course scholarship in analyzing an urgent contemporary problem—struggles associated with the “transition to adulthood” and the situation of young adults. Young people confronting this transition have been the focus of both the celebration of agency and of the growing attention on inequality and adversity and its effects on vulnerable periods and key transitions in the life course. Their situation provides an opportunity to resolve some of the tensions between perspectives that emphasize agency and those that emphasize inequality.
Agentic orientations developed in adolescence have been linked to better health, well-being, and achievements in the years following. This study examines longitudinal parental influences on the development of adolescent children's agentic orientations, captured by the core constructs of mastery beliefs and generalized life expectations. Drawing on multigenerational panel data from the United States (1991-2011), the study examines contemporaneous family factors, but also how parental biographies (their own transition to adulthood) and parents' own adolescent agentic orientations influence their adolescent children. Study adolescents were 46% male, 52% white, and 15.6 years old on average. The findings indicate that parents' early orientations and experiences in the transition to adulthood have little effect on their children's mastery beliefs, but that parents' generalized life expectations (in adolescence) and having married before having the child were associated with their children's more optimistic life expectations. Contemporaneous family income and optimistic expectations among parents-as-adolescents were somewhat substitutable as positive influences on adolescents' optimistic life expectations. The findings contribute to our understanding of intergenerational and over-time influences on these key adolescent orientations.
In 2 daily diary studies, we tested the consequences and precursors of daily goal progress throughout the adult life span. Attachment theory posits that exploration-including the pursuit of autonomous goals-promotes well-being across the life span and is facilitated by support from close others. For both young-adult newlyweds (Study 1) and married couples in late adulthood (Study 2), daily independent goal progress predicted same-day and next-day improvements in psychological, physical, and relational well-being. Specifically, when participants made more progress on their goals than usual on one day, they reported increases in positive affect, sleep quality, and relationship quality, and decreased physical symptoms, the following day (as well as concurrently). Additionally, spousal support (i.e., availability, encouragement, and noninterference) enabled same-day and next-day goal progress. Mediational analyses showed indirect links between spousal support and well-being through goal progress. Some effects were moderated by attachment orientation in the newlywed sample; individuals with greater insecure attachment benefited most from goal progress, and spousal support enabled goal progress most strongly for individuals with less anxious attachment. Overall, these results support and extend attachment theoretical propositions regarding the importance of the exploration system across the adult life span. They contribute to existing literature by demonstrating wide-ranging consequences of successful exploration for well-being and by providing evidence for the importance of both exploration and support for exploration into late adulthood. (PsycINFO Database Record
This article reports the development and psychometric properties of visions about future (VAF), an instrument assessing hope, optimism, and pessimism. Three different studies involving Italian adolescents were conducted. With the first study 22 items were developed and the factor structure was verified. The second study, involving a second sample of adolescents, confirmed the instrument’s multidimensional structure and evaluated the convergent validity of VAF with self-report measures of hope, optimism, and pessimism. Moreover, it showed that VAF correlated with life satisfaction and career adaptability. The third study involved a third sample of adolescents and verified the measurement invariance across gender.
The present study reveals that female students have significantly lower self-efficacy level and self-efficacy strength than their male peers in a course in Principles of Economics. This general conclusion does not hold for all personality types. The general conclusion of lower self-efficacy level in economics for female students compared to those of their male peers does only exist for female intuition and feeling (NF) and intuition and thinking students (NT) but not for the female sensing and perceiving student (SP). Furthermore, the result is revealing that the significant higher self-efficacy level for male students does only exist for male intuition and thinking students (NT) and not for male NF and SP students. Female students have significantly lower self-efficacy strength than their male peers. This does only exist for female intuition and thinking (NT) and sensing and perceiving (SP) students, but not for female NF students. The general result that male students have significantly higher self-efficacy strength than their female peers, does only encompass male intuition and thinking (NT) students and not the male SP and NF students. This study tells us that we should be cautions to conclude that self-efficacy is uniformly affected by gender. Gender-personality interactions do matter.
The most commonly used method to test an indirect effect is to divide the estimate of the indirect effect by its standard error and compare the resulting z statistic with a critical value from the standard normal distribution. Confidence limits for the indirect effect are also typically based on critical values from the standard normal distribution. This article uses a simulation study to demonstrate that confidence limits are imbalanced because the distribution of the indirect effect is normal only in special cases. Two alternatives for improving the performance of confidence limits for the indirect effect are evaluated: (a) a method based on the distribution of the product of two normal random variables, and (b) resampling methods. In Study 1, confidence limits based on the distribution of the product are more accurate than methods based on an assumed normal distribution but confidence limits are still imbalanced. Study 2 demonstrates that more accurate confidence limits are obtained using resampling methods, with the bias-corrected bootstrap the best method overall.
Sense of agency is an area of growing research interest with important implications for our understanding of consciousness; motor control; psychiatric symptoms, such as passivity phenomena; hypnosis; and the neuropsychological basis of moral and legal responsibility. These seemingly disparate research topics all overlap in a push toward increasingly specific models of the subjective phenomenology of action. In December 2013, a group of cognitive scientists, philosophers, and clinicians working on sense of agency gathered for a workshop at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. The collection of articles in this special issue presents a selection of ideas that have developed from that meeting and demonstrates some of the latest thinking on the theory, methods, and application of agency research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)
The results of two studies are reported. Study I involved the development of the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA), a self-report instrument for use with adolescents. Subject were 179 college students aged 16-20 years. Item content of the instrument was suggested by attachment theory's formulations concerning the nature of feelings toward attachment figures. In Study II, the convergent validity of the IPPA was examined. Also, a hierarchial regression model was employed to investigate the association between quality of attachment and self-esteem, life-satisfaction, and affective status. Respondents were 86 adolescents from the Study I sample. As hypothesized, perceived quality of both parent and peer attachments was significantly related to psychological well-being. Results of the development of a theoretically focused, exploratory classification scheme indicated that adolescents classified as highly securely attached reported greater satisfaction with themselves, a higher likelihood of seeking social support, and less symptomatic response to stressful life events.
The present research examined the development of attachment bonds in adult romantic relationships using a cross-sectional internet survey (Study 1) and a longitudinal study (Study 2). Results suggested that attachment features and functions emerge in a specific sequence that begins with proximity-seeking, followed by safe haven, and finally secure base. Our cross-sectional data indicated that people who had been in relationships for longer were more likely to use their partners for attachment functions. However, in our longitudinal study, after controlling for relationship length and age, there was relatively little change in attachment features and functions over time. The data also indicated that adult attachment bonds might develop more quickly than has been previously assumed.
The self-expansion model states that an expanded self-concept is associated with an increased sense of self-efficacy. We conducted four studies (three correlational, one experimental) to test this central tenet of the self-expansion model in a non-relational context. Results indicate that self-concept size (Studies 1 and 2) and subjective sense of self-concept (Study 3) were positively associated with greater self-efficacy. In Study 4, individuals who were randomly assigned to physically expand a representation of their self-concept reported greater self-efficacy at resolving potential problems than those who contracted a self-representation or left it unchanged. Taken together, these four studies provide the first empirical evidence that expanded self-concepts lead to greater self-efficacy.
Because perceptions of personal agency are important contributors to behavioral regulation, they play a significant role in promoting and maintaining competent functioning. Yet, thus far, these processes have been studied almost exlusively in older children and adults. Our discussion sketches the outlines of a life-span approach to the study of competence development by considering the emergence of personal agency beliefs in the infancy and toddler years and their importance to early developmental achievements. After presenting a general framework for conceptualizing personal agency beliefs and an overview of the research with older groups relevant to this framework, studies of the origins of perceived effectance and their motivational consequences in infancy are reviewed. Next we propose that individual differences in the security of attachment and their sequelae can be viewed as reflecting, in part, variations in perceptions of personal agency among infants and toddlers, a view which also suggests important new directions in attachment theory and research. Finally, we outline research issues concerning the generality and stability of personal agency beliefs, their behavioral correlates at different ages, and their overall role in a general life-span theory of competence development.
Mastery, or the feeling of power or control over one's life, is a vital yet understudied covariate of wellbeing in adolescence and adulthood. The goal of the current study was to explore the effects of demographic characteristics (i.e., sex, age, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (SES)), maternal mastery, and supportive-involved mothering on children's mastery at ages 16-17 years. 855 teens (47.6 % female) and their mothers provided study data as part of the 1992 and 1998 waves of National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1979 (NLSY-79; 24.1 % Hispanic, 36.6 % Black). Hybrid path models indicated that only maternal parenting during middle childhood was linked directly to levels of children's mastery in middle adolescence; a small portion of the association between parenting and adolescent mastery was attributable to SES. The discussion centers on significance of these findings for future research and theory development.
In the present study are presented the adaptation studies’ of the Short
Self-regulation Questionnaire (Carey, Neal & Collins, 2004), a measure that allows the
adaptation of Impulse control and Goal setting. In the analysis of the psychometric
properties of the questionnaire was found a consistent factorial structure and high
reliability values. It was also studied the relation between self-regulation, resilience, with the use of the Resilience scale (Wagnild & Young, 1993), and substance use in adolescence. The results suggest a relation between self-regulation and substance use, beyond a high correlation between goal setting and resilience and a moderate correlation between resilience and impulse control. The implications of the study are discussed.
Theories of the life course are increasingly taking into account conditions in late-modern societies that make it necessary for people to undertake the process of individualization in the transition to, and through, adulthood. In this paper, strategic responses to this requirement of late-modernity are described in terms of the identity capital model. This social-psychological model postulates that, net of structural obstacles, those who are more agentic in investing in their adult identities are better equipped to negotiate individualized life-course passages. Although some theorists use the individualization thesis from a post-structuralist point of view, arguing that agency is more important than structural factors like social class, this paper shows that it is not necessary to take such a position when using the individualization thesis. For example, those from middle-class origins attending universities must compete with each other and adapt to late-modern circumstances if they are to improve, or even maintain, their social class origins. Thus, when only middle-class experiences are examined, the basis of differential occupational attainment and life-course fulfillment is difficult to explain from either a structuralist or post-structuralist perspective. Using longitudinal data, this paper explores the extent to which the identity capital model can account for variations in the timing of, and satisfaction with, later middle-class life-course trajectories in the transition to adulthood.
The twentieth century has been characterized by four important social trends that have fundamentally changed the social cultural context in which children develop: women's increased labor force participation, increased absence of nonresidential fathers in the lives of their children, increased involvement of fathers in intact families, and increased cultural diversity in the U.S.. In this essay, we discuss how these trends are changing the nature of father involvement and family life, and in turn affecting children's and fathers' developmental trajectories. We end with an eye toward the twenty-first century by examining how the children of today will construct their expectations about the roles of fathers and mothers as they become the parents of tomorrow. This life-span approach to fatherhood considers the broader sociohistorical context in which fatherhood develops, and emphasizes the urgent need to consider mothers, fathers, and family structure in future research as we seek to understand and model the effects of parenting on children's development.
A theoretical model that links social support with global beliefs in primary control and provides a developmental perspective on how normative age-related changes alter control beliefs was examined with data from 482 adults aged 18 to 93. Generalized belief in primary control was hypothesized to have a direct positive effect on psychological well-being and to arise from two distinct sources: (a) interpersonal agency (obtaining positive ends through interactions with others) and (b) personal agency (achieving desired outcomes on one's own behalf). Age was believed to affect both types of agency indirectly as a result of age-related changes in physical health and emotional support. Although physical health was presumed to have a direct positive effect on psychological well-being, the effect of emotional support on well-being was mediated by interpersonal agency and perceived primary control. Structural equation modeling analyses with the EQS 5.4 program revealed good model fit (goodness-of-fit
, comparative fit
, root mean square residual
, standardized
, root mean square error of
) after a negative direct path from age to generalized beliefs in primary control was added to the a priori model.
This study examined the effects of multiple risk, promotive, and protective factors on three achievement-related measures (i.e., grade point average, number of absences, and math achievement test scores) for African American 7th-grade students (n = 837). There were 3 main findings. First, adolescents had lower grade point averages, more absences, and lower achievement test scores as their exposure to risk factors increased. Second, different promotive and protective factors emerged as significant contributors depending on the nature of the achievement-related outcome that was being assessed. Third, protective factors were identified whose effects were magnified in the presence of multiple risks. Results were discussed in light of the developmental tasks facing adolescents and the contexts in which youth exposed to multiple risks and their families live.
The self-regulation questionnaire (SRQ) is a 63-item instrument designed to measure the generalized ability to regulate behavior so as to achieve desired future outcomes. This study extended previous psychometric evaluations of the SRQ by determining the factor structure and internal consistency of the SRQ and providing convergent and discriminant evidence for its validity. Participants were undergraduates (N=391; 55% women) from two consecutive semesters (n(1)=208; n(2)=183). A single-factor solution emerged (31 items), invariant across gender and semester. These items were combined to create a short version of the SRQ (SSRQ; alpha=.92), which was highly correlated with the original SRQ (r=.96). Unrelated to demographic variables and alcohol use, the SSRQ correlated significantly with alcohol-related problems. The association between the SSRQ and problems remained even after controlling for social desirability and alcohol consumption. These results support the use of the SSRQ in young adult samples. Further psychometric evaluation of the SSRQ is necessary, however, to further establish its validity and utility as a measure of generalized self-regulation capacity.
This article examines gender differences in optimism about the economy. We measure optimism using Swedish survey data in which respondents stated their beliefs about the country’s future economic situation. We argue that this measure of optimism is preferable to common measurements in the literature since it avoids confounding individuals’ economic situation with their perception of the future and it can be compared to economic indicators. In line with previous research, we find that men are more optimistic than women; however, men are also more prone to be wrong in their beliefs about the future economic situation. Furthermore, in sharp economic downturns, the gender differences in optimism disappear. This convergence in beliefs can be explained by the amount of available information on the economy.
This study examined whether attachment relationships with the mother, father, best friend, and romantic partner relate to the career decision-making process (occupational information, goal selection and vocational identity) of emerging adults directly as well as indirectly through self-concept clarity as a mediator. The questionnaires were administered to 1,342 young people at two time points (two years apart). The results of our structural equation modeling analyses indicated significant direct paths between attachment to all figures under the investigation and career decision-making process at Time 1. The self-concept clarity mediated all associations between attachment figures and career decision-making process. Moreover, at Time 2, only attachment to the romantic partner (not to the other attachment figures) was associated with the career decision-making process both directly and indirectly through the self-concept clarity. These findings suggest that the romantic partner is the most influential attachment figure in emerging adults' career decision-making process, although attachment relationships with parents and the best friend also remain important in their career development.
Passivity symptoms in schizophrenia are characterised by an absence of agency for actions, thoughts and other somatic experiences. Time perception and intentional binding have both been linked to agency and schizophrenia but have not been examined in passivity symptoms. Time perception and intentional binding were assessed in people with schizophrenia (n=15 with, n=24 without passivity symptoms) and 43 healthy controls using an interval estimation procedure (200, 400 and 600ms intervals) with active, passive and observed movements. People with passivity symptoms did not display action-modulation of time perception, while those without passivity symptoms estimated intervals to be the same after active and observed movements. Additionally, both clinical samples reported intervals to be shorter with increasing interval length. We propose that impaired predictive processes may produce an overreliance on external cues and, together with shorter perceived intervals, lead to the subjective loss of agency.
Self-determination theory (SDT) maintains that the adequate support and satisfaction of individuals' psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness promotes the gradual unfolding of individuals' integrative tendencies, as manifested through intrinsic motivation, internalization, identity development, and integrative emotion regulation. At the same time, the thwarting of these same psychological needs and the resultant need frustration is presumed to evoke or amplify a variety of psychopathologies, many of which involve autonomy disturbances. We begin by defining what autonomy involves and how socializing agents, particularly parents, can provide a nurturing (i.e., need-supportive) environment, and we review research within the SDT literature that has shed light on various integrative tendencies and how caregivers facilitate them. In the second part of this chapter, we detail how many forms of psychopathology involve autonomy disturbances and are associated with a history of psychological need thwarting. We especially focus on internally controlling regulation in internalizing disorders; impairments of internalization in conduct disorders and antisocial behavior; and fragmented self-functioning in borderline and dissociative disorders. The role of autonomy support as an ameliorative factor in treatment settings is then discussed among other translational issues. Finally we highlight some implications of recognizing the important role of basic psychological needs for both growth-related and pathology-related processes.
Keywords:
autonomy;
attachment;
internalization;
parenting;
psychological needs;
self-determination theory
Empirical treatments of agency have not caught up with theoretical explication; empirical projects almost always focus on concurrent beliefs about one's ability to act successfully without sufficiently attending to temporality. We suggest that understanding the modern life course necessitates a multidimensional understanding of subjective agency involving a) perceived capacities and b) perceived life-chances, or expectations about what life holds in store. We also suggest that a proper understanding of agency's potential power within a life course necessitates moving beyond the domain-specific expectations more typical of past sociological work. Utilizing the Youth Development Study (YDS), we employ a scale of general life expectations in adolescence to explore the potential influence of a general sense of optimistic life-expectations in addition to the traditional agency-as-efficacy approach on a range of important outcomes.
Based on Bowlby's and Ainsworth's attachment theory, and on Bartholomew's conceptual and methodological approach, this paper addresses parental and romantic attachment representations of late adolescents. Using a cross‑sectional research design, the study examines (a) continuities and discontinuities across relational domains, and (b) differences in attachment representations as a function of adolescents and parental gender. Two coded semistructured interviews (Family Attachment Interview e Peer Attachment Interview, Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991) were administrated to a sample of 82 late adolescents. Results indicate the presence of regularities in the attachment representations of both domains, evidenced in the thematic and content recurrences, as well as in the structural recurrences of the narratives' organization. Albeit the moderate magnitude of the values observed, adolescents with secure attachments to parents tend to relate in a more secure way to their romantic partners, presenting more positive representations of self and others. No gender differences in attachment patterns were observed, although attachment to mother was classified as more preoccupied for boys and girls, and attachment to father as more dismissive only for boys.
Rates of STIs, HIV, and pregnancy remain high among adolescents in the US, and recent approaches to reducing sexual risk have shown limited success. Future expectations, or the extent to which one expects an event to actually occur, may influence sexual risk behavior. This prospective study uses longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (n = 3,205 adolescents; 49.8 % female) to examine the impact of previously derived latent classes of future expectations on sexual risk behavior. Cox regression and latent growth models were used to determine the effect of future expectations on age at first biological child, number of sexual partners, and inconsistent contraception use. The results indicate that classes of future expectations were uniquely associated with each outcome. The latent class reporting expectations of drinking and being arrested was consistently associated with the greatest risks of engaging in sexual risk behavior compared with the referent class, which reported expectations of attending school and little engagement in delinquent behaviors. The class reporting expectations of attending school and drinking was associated with having greater numbers of sexual partners and inconsistent contraception use but not with age at first biological child. The third class, defined by expectations of victimization, was not associated with any outcome in adjusted models, despite being associated with being younger at the birth of their first child in the unadjusted analysis. Gender moderated specific associations between latent classes and sexual risk outcomes. Future expectations, conceptualized as a multidimensional construct, may have a unique ability to explain sexual risk behaviors over time. Future strategies should target multiple expectations and use multiple levels of influence to improve individual future expectations prior to high school and throughout the adolescent period.
Two hundred thirty-seven young adults from an American university completed a questionnaire designed to test several normative implications of attachment theory. As predicted, the majority of participants (60%) used their parents as primary attachment figures but were in the process of transferring attachment-related functions from parents to peers (best friends and romantic partners). The transfer of these functions the parents to peers was found to be a function of the duration of the peer relationship. Furthermore, factors that generally promote the development of attachment formation in infancy (such as caregiving, trust, and intimate contact) were found to be positively associated with the development of attachment in adult relationships. Additional variables were identified that may facilitate peer attachment formation: secure working models of attachment and the perceived security of the peer. It is argued that future investigations into the role of attachment formation and transfer are critical for a comprehensive description of attachment dynamics in adult relationships.
This paper reviews social psychological measures that might usefully be employed within sociological treatments of human agency. Sociologists have engaged both (a) the structural constraints and opportunities that channel individual action and (b) the subjective sense individuals develop reflecting beliefs about their ability to affect those structures and their life courses. We briefly spell out the well-trod agency vs. structure debate before exploring six concepts that have or could be used in organizing and theorizing empirical research on the subjective version of agency: self-efficacy, locus of control, personal control, mastery, planful competence, and ego-depletion/self-control. For each concept, we provide brief descriptions and representative findings. Taking a life course perspective, we briefly sketch out a series of concerns that scholars engaging in the agency concept should take into account.
Two new scales of parental care and overprotection, and their combination as a Parental Bonding Instrument, are described. On measurements of reliability and validity the scales appear to be acceptable, and are independent of the parent's sex. It would appear that mothers are perceived as significantly more caring and slightly more overprotective than fathers, but that those judgements are not influenced by the sex of the child. Overprotection appears to be associated with lack of care. The scales and scoring method are appended. Norms for a general Sydney population are presented, and the possible influence of age, sex and social class examined.
Attachment theory is a powerful framework for understanding affect regulation. In this article, we examine the role played by attachment orientation in shaping emotional reactions to interpersonal transactions within close relationships. Using our recent integrative model of attachment-system activation and dynamics as a guide (M. Mikulincer & P. R. Shaver, 2003), we review relevant evidence, present new findings, and propose hypotheses concerning how people with different attachment styles are likely to react emotionally to relational events. Specifically, we focus on attachment-related variations in the emotional states elicited by a relationship partner's positive and negative behaviors and by signals of a partner's (relationship relevant or relationship irrelevant) distress or pleasure. In so doing, we organize existing knowledge and point the way to future research on attachment-related emotions in close relationships.
The degree of continuity over time in the quality of parent-child attachments and the relationship between these attachments and current self-esteem was investigated. Subjects were 218 nonparent college students. The attachment working model styles were determined by modified versions of two attachment measures. Epstein's Mother-Father-Peer Scale of 1983 yielded separate scores for independence-encouraging and acceptance, and Hazan and Shaver's 1987 Rocky Mountain Survey indicated secure, avoidant, or ambivalent attachment patterns. Self-esteem was measured by Coopersmith's Self-Esteem Inventory of 1967. Data collected indicated support for Bowlby's 1988 theory of continuity over time of attachment. Self-esteem was related to both childhood and adolescent working model styles of attachment and to the dimensions of independence-encouraging and acceptance. The two attachment measures were related. Subjects who classified their parent-child attachment as secure rated their parents as high in independence-encouraging and acceptance.
In this study with 236 Portuguese university students, we examined two competing models for understanding identity. In the first model, the direct independent effects of parental and romantic attachment on identity were tested. The second model examined the mediating role of romantic attachment representations in the link between parental attachment and identity. The participants completed measures of parental and romantic attachment at the beginning of the freshman year (Wave 1), and a measure of identity development 18 months later (Wave 2). Structural equation modeling for the independent model indicated that identity is exclusively predicted by romantic attachment at this life stage, and not by parental attachment. Regarding the second model, our mediational hypothesis was supported, since the association between parental attachment and identity was totally mediated by romantic attachment representations. Both models presented adequate indices of adjustment, and provided a complementary understanding of the differential role that romantic relations play in contributing to explaining identity development.
A central tenet of attachment theory is that a person's attachment pattern in adulthood is a reflection of his or her attachment history—-beginning with the person's earliest attachment relationships. However, the precise way in which early representations might shape adult attachment patterns is ambiguous, and different perspectives on this issue have evolved in the literature. According to the prototype perspective, representations of early experiences are retained over time and continue to play an influential role in attachment behavior throughout the life course. In contrast, the revisionist perspective holds that early representations are subject to modification on the basis of new experiences and therefore may or may not reflect patterns of attachment later in life. In this article, I explore and test mathematical models of each of these theoretical processes on the basis of longitudinal data obtained from meta-analysis. Results indicate that attachment security is moderately stable across the first 19 years of life and that patterns of stability are best accounted for by prototype dynamics.
A new 4-group model of attachment styles in adulthood is proposed. Four prototypic attachment patterns are defined using combinations of a person's self-image (positive or negative) and image of others (positive or negative). In Study 1, an interview was developed to yield continuous and categorical ratings of the 4 attachment styles. Intercorrelations of the attachment ratings were consistent with the proposed model. Attachment ratings were validated by self-report measures of self-concept and interpersonal functioning. Each style was associated with a distinct profile of interpersonal problems, according to both self- and friend-reports. In Study 2, attachment styles within the family of origin and with peers were assessed independently. Results of Study 1 were replicated. The proposed model was shown to be applicable to representations of family relations; Ss' attachment styles with peers were correlated with family attachment ratings.
The capacity to exercise control over the nature and quality of one's life is the essence of humanness. Human agency is characterized by a number of core features that operate through phenomenal and functional consciousness. These include the temporal extension of agency through intentionality and forethought, self-regulation by self-reactive influence, and self-reflectiveness about one's capabilities, quality of functioning, and the meaning and purpose of one's life pursuits. Personal agency operates within a broad network of sociostructural influences. In these agentic transactions, people are producers as well as products of social systems. Social cognitive theory distinguishes among three modes of agency: direct personal agency, proxy agency that relies on others to act on one's behest to secure desired outcomes, and collective agency exercised through socially coordinative and interdependent effort. Growing transnational embeddedness and interdependence are placing a premium on collective efficacy to exercise control over personal destinies and national life.