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Positive and Negative Family Emotional Climate Differentially Predict Youth Anxiety and Depression via Distinct Affective Pathways

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Abstract

A socioaffective specificity model was tested in which positive and negative affect differentially mediated relations of family emotional climate to youth internalizing symptoms. Participants were 134 7th-9th grade adolescents (65 girls; 86 % Caucasian) and mothers who completed measures of emotion-related family processes, experienced affect, anxiety, and depression. Results suggested that a family environment characterized by maternal psychological control and family negative emotion expressiveness predicted greater anxiety and depression, and was mediated by experienced negative affect. Conversely, a family emotional environment characterized by low maternal warmth and low positive emotion expressiveness predicted only depression, and was mediated through lowered experienced positive affect. This study synthesizes a theoretical model of typical family emotion socialization with an extant affect-based model of shared and unique aspects of anxiety and depression symptom expression.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a University of Missouri Research Council Grant (URC-07-081). We thank Martha Early for assistance with project design and data collection as well as Elizabeth Kiel for helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Miami University, 100 Psychology Building, 90 N. Patterson Ave, Oxford, OH, 45056, USA

    Aaron M. Luebbe

  2. Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri – Columbia, Columbia, MO, USA

    Debora J. Bell

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Correspondence to Aaron M. Luebbe.

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Luebbe, A.M., Bell, D.J. Positive and Negative Family Emotional Climate Differentially Predict Youth Anxiety and Depression via Distinct Affective Pathways. J Abnorm Child Psychol 42, 897–911 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-013-9838-5

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