Author ORCID Identifier
Date Available
5-11-2023
Year of Publication
2023
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
College
Arts and Sciences
Department/School/Program
Psychology
First Advisor
Dr. Gregory T. Smith
Abstract
Negative urgency (NU; the tendency to act rashly when experiencing negative emotions) is a robust risk factor for a number of problem behaviors, including early adolescent drinking. Little is known about the factors that precede the development of NU, and hence the full etiology of this component of risk. The current study aimed to investigate the possibility that childhood maladaptive emotion socialization (MES; the tendency for children’s expressions of emotions to be met with punishment, minimized, or invoke a reaction of distress from their parents/caretakers) increases risk for the development of NU. Secondarily, the study tested whether MES predicts increased drinking over the short term among early adolescents. Self-report measures of NU, facets of MES (punitive, distress, and minimizing reactions to emotions), and problem drinking were collected from a sample of 428 high school students (mean age = 14.7), assessed twice over the course of a semester, reflecting a three-month longitudinal window. Specifically, I examined (1) whether MES would predict increases in NU (2) whether the pattern of relationships would support the possibility that NU mediates the relationship between MES and problem drinking and (3) whether these predictive pathways were invariant by race and gender. Results showed that distress emotion socialization predicted increases in NU, minimizing predicted decreases in NU, and punitive did not provide significant prediction. Additionally, results found that this process was invariant across race and gender, though differences were observed for prediction of problem drinking. Results did not support any mediational processes. Implications of these results are discussed.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2023.178
Funding Information
This study was supported by National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (F31 AA030172), awarded in 2022.
Recommended Citation
Atkinson, Emily, "THE ROLE OF MALADAPTIVE EMOTION SOCIALIZATION IN RISK FOR URGENCY AND PROBLEM DRINKING IN ADOLESCENTS" (2023). Theses and Dissertations--Psychology. 234.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/psychology_etds/234
