The Role of Emotion Processing in the Association between Parental Discipline and Adolescent Socio-Emotional Development.

This research investigated whether biases in processing threatening emotional cues operate as an indirect pathway through which parental harsh discipline is associated with adolescent socio-emotional functioning. Participants were 192 adolescents (M age = 12.4), and their parents assessed over two years. Findings revealed two significant indirect pathways involving fear processing. Greater parental harsh discipline was linked to more emotional response inhibition difficulty for fear, which was linked to more depressive symptoms in the following year. Greater parental harsh discipline was also associated with more emotional response inhibition difficulty for fear, and thereby, more peer problems later. Findings suggest that adolescent emotional processing operated as an indirect pathway linking parental harsh discipline and adolescent socio-emotional functioning within the broader social context.