Sofie Kuppens and her colleagues from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, studied the amount of physical aggression and relational aggression (the purposeful manipulation or damage to relationships) used by 600 children aged between 8 and 10 and compared this to parents’ use of physical punishment and psychological control.
As well as using discipline or rewards to control or manage a child’s behaviour, some parents also use psychological control which may include emotional manipulation, criticism or excessive personal control.
claimed Sofie Kuppens
As children learn and adopt behaviour from their parents, we wanted to see whether children whose parents use psychological control strategies are more likely to use relational aggression - the purposeful manipulation or damage to relationships, through silent treatment, social exclusion, or spreading of malicious rumours for example.
Parents were asked to assess their own and their partner’s level of physical punishment and psychological controlling behaviour - questions such as: ‘If my child hurts my feelings I don’t speak to him/her until s/he pleases me again’. Each child’s physically and relationally aggressive behaviour was then assessed by parents, school teachers and class mates.
It was found that the parent’s use of physical punishment was
significantly linked to the children’s level of physical aggression
both at home and at school. Parental psychological control was also
significantly linked to the children’s use of relational aggression,
although this was only significant at home. Results also suggested that
a child’s use of relational aggression is dependent on the social
situation.
This study lends further support to research that has found that a child’s behaviour often parallels their parents’. In this case, a child’s use of physical or psychological aggression was linked to the methods of control that their parents used.
However, it’s important to remember that parents’ and children’s behaviour mutually influence each other and that a children’s use of physical and relational aggression will be the result of multiple influences; temperament, peers and teachers, as well parenting influences.
Source: BPS (Press Release)
