Teens with authoritarian parents tend to hold more antisocial beliefs, study finds
Teens whose parents lean on yelling, threats, and punishment without explanation tend to hold stronger beliefs that rule-breaking and aggression are acceptable, a four-wave study of U.S. families suggests.
A recent study published in the Journal of Research on Adolescence found that teenagers raised by authoritarian parents, who rely on strict and punitive discipline, tend to hold more enduring beliefs that justify rule-breaking and aggression. These authoritarian parenting styles, characterized by rigid rules, high control, verbal hostility, and punishments delivered without explanation, combined with little warmth, have been linked to both internalizing problems (anxiety and depression) and externalizing problems (aggression and delinquency).
The study, conducted by Wusirige, Bo Jian, and Gabriel J. Merrin, used emotion regulation and social-cognitive frameworks to examine how these attitudes develop alongside emotional distress. The researchers suggest that a cold, hostile home environment may create chronic stress that wears down a teenager's ability to manage difficult feelings, while threats and unexplained punishments may teach youth to view authority as arbitrary and coercion as acceptable.
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