(PS8-B49) Parental Psychological Control and Peer Victimization: The Moderating Role of Maladaptive Cognitive Appraisals

Introduction: Parental psychological control, or the use of emotional manipulation (e.g., shaming and guilt induction) to influence children’s behavior, has been found to increase youth’s risk for peer victimization (Frazer et al., 2018). Prior work also suggests that children who engage in maladaptive cognitive appraisals of stressful situations are more likely to experience poorer social outcomes, including peer victimization (Prinstein et al., 2005). Thus, the goal of the current cross-sectional study was to investigate whether children’s maladaptive cognitive appraisals moderated the impact of parental psychological control on peer victimization.

Method: Participants included 337 children (51% boys; 52% Hispanic/Latinx) in grades 3-5 from two elementary schools in the West South-Central region of the United States. Children completed self-report measures of parental psychological control, cognitive appraisals (i.e., self-blaming, other-blaming, and rumination), and traditional and cyber peer victimization during the Fall 2022 semester.

Results: Results indicated that rumination and self-blaming appraisals moderated the links from psychological control to traditional and cyber victimization. That is, psychological control was not associated with either type of victimization at low levels (–1 SD) of rumination or self-blaming appraisals, but it was positively linked with traditional and cyber victimization at moderate (mean) and high (+1 SD) levels of rumination and self-blaming appraisals. Other-blaming appraisals also moderated the link between psychological control and cyber victimization, such that psychological control was not associated with cyber victimization at low levels (–1 SD), but it was positively linked at moderate (mean) and high levels (+1 SD) of other-blaming appraisals. With regards to traditional victimization, there were positive main effects of both psychological control and other-blaming attributions, but there was not a significant interaction.


Discussion: The current findings suggest that the ways in which children appraise stressful situations can serve as either a risk or a protective factor for traditional and cyber peer victimization when children experience psychologically controlling parenting. That is, parental psychological control was not linked with peer victimization at low levels of rumination, self-blaming, and other-blaming appraisals. Thus, more adaptive appraisals protected children from the harmful effects of this coercive parenting behavior. When children showed moderate to high levels of these maladaptive cognitive appraisals, however, psychological control increased risk for peer victimization. In sum, the current findings provide preliminary evidence that intervention efforts aimed at reducing peer victimization experiences may benefit from addressing maladaptive cognitive appraisals. These intervention efforts might also serve to mitigate against the harmful effects associated with coercive parenting practices, such as psychological control.