The relation of perceived parenting with integrative ...

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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 00 (2011) 000–000 Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 30 (2011) 226 – 230

Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia

WCPCG-2011

The relation of perceived parenting with integrative self-knowledge Mahsa Sadat Asghari a *, Mohammad Ali Besharat a 1

a

Department of Psychology, University of Tehran, P. O. Box 14155-6456, Tehran, Iran

Abstract This study investigated the relation of perceived parenting (including involvement, autonomy support and warmth dimensions) with integrative self-knowledge. 352 students aged 18-20 (142 boys, 210 girls) completed the Perception Of Parents Scale (Grolnick, Deci, & Ryan, 1997) and Integrative Self-Knowledge scale (Ghorbani, Watson, & Hargis, 2008). The results indicated that perceived autonomy support and warmth were positively associated with integrative self-knowledge. Also, perceived autonomy support and then warmth (especially of the mother) can predict changes of integrative self-knowledge. It can be concluded that the person’s autonomy support is one of the most effective factors in developing the self-knowledge. © PublishedbybyElsevier Elsevier Ltd. and/or peer-review under responsibility of the 2nd World Conference © 2011 Published Ltd. AllSelection rights reserved.

on Psychology, Counselling and Guidance.

Keywords: Perceived parenting, parenting dimentions, integrative self-knowledge

1. Introduction The capacity of understanding internal experiences in a temporal and integrated way is called integrative self-knowledge (Ghorbani, Watson, Bing, Davison, & LeBreton, 2003; Ghorbani, Watson, & Hargis, 2008). This process, that is an adaptive and empowering attempt of the self to understand its own experiences across time, enables the person to regulate thoughts and emotions by realizing his potentials, and recognize and choose optimal activities to achieve desired outcomes. Self-knowledge is conceptualized as an adaptive, dynamic, and integrative construction and it includes two interrelated faces of "experiential" and "reflective"; experiential self-knowledge defined as a receptive processing of information about the self in terms of its moment-to-moment, discriminates among and processes the contents of current experience and also helps prevent excessively automatic or compulsive forms of responding. Reflective self -knowledge defined as an active cognitive processing of information about the self-relative to its past. It involves the analysis of self-experience through more complex, higher-order cognitive functions and facilitates the creation of progressively more sophisticated self-schemas that would supply a broader perspective for guiding behavior. These two faces are integrated because "self" tries to maintain a coherent life story (McAdams, 1999). According to researches, integrative self-knowledge is associated with the sense of selfdetermination (Ghorbani et al, 2008) and satisfaction of basic needs (Ryan & Brown, 2003), facilitates their satisfaction (Ghorbani & Watson, 2006), is a function of socio-economic situations (Watson, Ghorbani, Davison, Bing, Hood, & Ghramaleki, 2002), and is influenced by cultural and environmental factors.

* Mahsa Sadat Asghari. Tel.: +989352179528 E-mail address: [email protected] 1877-0428 © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the 2nd World Conference on Psychology, Counselling and Guidance. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.10.045

Mahsa Sadat Asghari Mohammad Besharat / Procedia - Social andSciences Behavioral Sciences 30 (2011) 226 – 230 Mahsaand Sadat Asghari /Ali Procedia – Social and Behavioral 00 (2011) 000–000

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Amongst the effective social factors in developing self-knowledge are the parents’ parenting manner and the child’s perception of it. Parenting is defined as the attitude that parents have about child -rearing (Darling & Steinberg, 1993) and includes three dimensions or features (Grolnick, Deci, & Ryan, 1997): involvement (defined as the extent to which the parents are interested in, knowledgeable about, and actively participates in the child’s life), autonomy support (defined as the degree to which the parents value their child’s perspective and use techniques that encourage choice, self-initiation, and participation in making decisions), and warmth (defined as the degree to which the parents are responsive, sensitive and regarding toward their child). Parenting with these three features, because of satisfying the fundamental psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) and facilitating the child’s intrinsic motivation, causes more internalization of the parents’ attitudes and behavioral regulations, establish engagement and development of self-system processes and also self-regulation abilities and gaining emotional competence s in child. Views about parenting a child can be divided into two groups: typological approaches (e.g., Baumrind, 1971; Maccoby & Martin, 1983) and dimensional approaches (e.g., Barber, 1997; Darling & Steinberg, 1993; Deci & Ryan, 1985). In the first group patterns, different combinations of two dimensions of responsiveness (warmth) and demandingness (control), create four types of parenting styles: authoritative (balanced relation between warmth and control), authoritarian (low warmth and high control), permissive (high warmth and low control) and neglectful (low warmth and control). In more recent theoretical models, there is more emphasis on dimensions of parenting, not its types, and for determination of each style, each dimension is considered individually. Also, unlike the first kind which focused on measuring the parents’ attitude for determining the parenting style, in most dimensional approaches, the criterion is the child’s perception. The present study as well is based on self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985), and has investigated parenting from such perspective. Some researches, however few they are, have shown that the absence of balanced relation between parental warm and control leads to a sense of insecurity and development of dysfunctional cognitive schema (internal working models) (Vasey & Dadds, 2001), anger, self-blame and negative cognitive style (Manassis & Bradley, 1994; Mezulis, Shibley Hyde, & Abramson, 2006), and also the flow of negative automatic thoughts (Ingram, Overbey, & Fortier, 2001). To the contrary, creation of safe feeling provides the opportunity to find oneself freely and achieving a state of cognitive integrity (Ainsworth & Bowlby, 1991; Fonagy, 2001). Some studies focused on the importance of feeling internal control in developing such abilities and have indicated that the sense of being controlled from the outside is related to inability to analyse and to self-reflect, higher-order thinking, mindful action and personality integration (Brown, Ryan, & Creswell, 2007; Ryan & Deci, 2004; Sheldon & Kasser, 1995). The researches about the relation of perception of the manner of parenting with the ability of self-knowledge, are both limited and insufficient. Therefore, a precise recognition of cultivating factors of this ability requires more effort. The main purpose of the present study was to examine the relation of perceived parenting (including three dimensions of involvement , autonomy support, and warmth) with integrative self-knowledge. 2. Method 2.1. Participants and Procedure Participants were 352 undergraduate students (142 boys and 210 girls) from the University of Tehran that was selected by the method of multi-stage cluster random sampling (mean age= 18.39 years, age range= 18 to 20, SD= 0.78). After describing the goals of the study for participants in the classrooms, they completed the Perception of Parents Scale (Grolnick et al., 1997), and Integrative Self-Knowledge Scale (Ghorbani et al., 2008). 2.2. Measures Perceptions Of Parents Scale (POPS)- The POPS (Grolnick et al., 1997) is a 42-item (21 for mothers and 21 for fathers) self-report measure. Each item is rated on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all true) to 7 (very true). The POPS is made up of six sub-scales: Mother Involvement, Mother Autonomy Support, and

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Mahsa Sadat Asghari and Mohammad Ali Besharat Procedia - Social and Behavioral Mahsa Sadat Asghari / Procedia – Social /and Behavioral Sciences 00 (2011)Sciences 000–00030 (2011) 226 – 230

Mother Warmth, Father Involvement, Father Autonomy Support, and Father Warmth. Adequate psychometric properties of English (Grolnick et al., 1997) and Farsi (Karshki, 2008) versions of the scale have been reported. Integrative Self-Knowledge Scale (ISKS)- This scale (Ghorbani et al., 2008) consists of 12 items to which subjects respond on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 0 (mostly incorrect) to 4 (mostly correct). It provides the score of integrative self-knowledge that measures two faces of experiential self-knowledge and reflective selfknowledge in an integrated way. The inter-cultural investigations in Iran and United State and in 3 separate groups has indicated that this scale has an internal reliability and measurement equivalence, criterion, convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity (Ghorbani et al., 2008). 3. Results Before analysing the data, T test was computed to compare boys with girls regarding parenting dimensions and integrative self-knowledge scores. Results indicated that two sexes had significant differences in some sub-scales (MI, MW, and FW). So to test the research hypotheses, correlation coefficients between research variables were computed separately in the two sexes (table 1 ). Table 1. Pearson correlation between parenting dimensions and integrative self-knowledge scores Variables

Boys 0.08 0.31** 0.26** 0.08 0.04 0.10

Mother Involvement Mother Autonomy Support Mother Warmth Father Involvement Father Autonomy Support Father Warmth ** P< 0.01; * P< 0.05

Integrative Self-Knowledge

Girls -0.01 0.17* 0.17* 0.09 0.20** 0.15*

Then, the relation of parenting dimensions as a predictive variable and self -knowledge as a criterion variable was analysed step by step and separately for the two sexes in regression equation. The results indicated that some of the dimensions have more explanatory power. Their meaningful results are as follows. Table 2 show that the F is significant (P< 0.001) and 9.6 % of variance related to integrative selfknowledge is explained by MAS (R 2 = 0.096). Table 3 indicate that the F is significant (P< 0.01) and 5.7 % of variance related to integrative self-knowledge is explained by FAS and MW (R 2= 0.057). Table 2. Summary of regression model, variance analysis and statistical characteristics of integrative self -knowledge on parenting dimensions in boys Model Index Regression Residual Variable index Mother Autonomy Support

SS

DF

MS

F

P

R

R2

825.10 7810.50 B 3.73

1 140 SEB 0.969

825.10 55.789 Beta 0.309

14.790

0.001

0.309

0.096

T 3.846

P 0.001

Table 3. Summary of regression model, variance analysis and statistical characteristics of integrative self -knowledge on parenting dimensions in girls Model Index Regression Residual Variable index Father Autonomy Support Mother Warmth

SS

DF

MS

F

P

R

R2

733.44 1206.49 B 1.978 1.151

2 207 SEB 0.783 0.583

366.721 58.258 Beta 0.173 0.136

6.295

0.002

0.239

0.057

T 2.525 1.973

P 0.012 0.05

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The results revealed that primarily the dimension of "autonomy support" and then "warmth" (especially of the mother) can predict the changes of "integrative self-knowledge". Findings also indicated that in boys only perception of mother’s parenting plays a role, while in girls the perception of both parents’ parenting. 4. Discussion The present study found that some dimensions of perceived parenting ( consisting of autonomy support and warmth) were positively associated with integrative self -knowledge. These findings are consistent with some previous studies (Ingram et al, 2001; Ryan & Deci, 2004; Sheldon & Kasser, 1995). Analysis also indicated that primarily the dimension of "perceived autonomy support" and then "perceived warmth" (especially of the mother) can predict the changes of "integrative self-knowledge". These results are to some extent in accordance with the previous findings (Ainsworth & Bowlby, 1991; Brown et al, 2007; Fonagy, 2001; Mezulis et al, 2006; Vasey & Dadds, 2001). According to the findings of this study, integrative self-knowledge is more influenced by the amount of perceived autonomy. This finding, given the existence of a kind of priority in the order of the phases of emotional and cognitive development seems reasonable. Indeed, during adolescence, achieving a state of cognitive integrity and self-knowledge is feasible if in the past the parents’ responsiveness and warmth has satisfied the child’s need for relatedness and has created a sense of security in him and has generated a sense of self-confidence in him through affecting the cognitive schema. It is in this case that his attachment transforms into a healthy inter-dependence and optimum pattern making of values and affectionate the parents’ regulating methods and gaining harmonious and non-conflicting experiences, causes the child to assimilate and internalize the correct way of knowledge- and thought-regulation. During adolescence, the need for autonomy is the main concern and replaces the need for warmth. Satisfying this need by the parents leads to an increase in motives and opportunity for monitoring, evaluating, changing and regulating knowledge in adolescence. In other words, satisfying the need for selfobedience, instead of obeying another, in adolescence allows the individual to return from the outside to the inside, monitor and detect himself, take a viewpoint, change, regulate himself and integrate the personal experiences. On the other hand, if the parents don’t have the ability to satisfy their child’s needs, if they create the sense of insecurity and insecure internalization models and impaired cognitive mental structures (that have the tendency to negative) and oriented cognitive assessments in him, and also if they utilize destructive, inefficient and non-conflicting patterns, they will bring the child through transfer these patterns to the inside, to show instability, fixation and in some cases regression and belief in primitive systems. The results, is the adolescent’s tendency and dependence to the outside (instead of inside) and failing in evaluating and knowing oneself. Accordingly, it could be said that early relations of the parents with the child should start with warmth; and as the child develops, and the adolescence begins, these warm relationships complemented by recognition of emotions, thoughts and choices and giving the child permission of autonomy, in order to lead to reinforcing the ability of self-confidence, self-initiation, selfregulation, and to experiencing the feeling of emotional and cognitive integrity. But the important role of motivation in getting the individual to a state of regulating and integration, is significant (Turban, Tan, Brown & Sheldon, 2007); because according to the Holden and Hawk (2003) theory, it’s only with having an effortful cognition that one can gain a sense of harmony and cognitive integrity. In short, this study indicated that the way an adolescent percive his parents’ parenting (specially perceived autonomy support and warmth) predicts changes in the amount of his self-knowledge. At theoretical level, this finding can lead to a better understanding of the role of the parents’ parenting and the child’s perception of it, as influential factors in generating difficulties with regulating one’s cognition, or in increasing the ability to recognize the capacities of oneself. At practical level, findings show the necessity of providing educational programs for the parents, students and also therapists to increase cognitive skills. The limitations of this study were related to the population of the research (students) and the kind of research (correlation). In generalizing the findings, these should be taken into consideration. In addition, possible problems related to the validity of POPS should not be ignored. We offer executing similar projects using widespread samples in different universities of the country and in the public population, considering the inner-psychology variables like personality traits, and effective outer factors such as socio-economic situation, family population and the number of children.

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