Rejection Sensitivity and Responses to Rejection: Serial Mediators Linking Parenting to Adolescents and Young Adults’ Depression and Trait-Anxiety

Abstract

Drawing from and extending rejection sensitivity (RS) theory, we tested a serial mediation pathway model, whereby perceived parenting practices were expected to be indirectly related to participants’ depressive and trait-anxious symptoms through RS, as well as emotional and behavioural responses to rejection. Participants were 628 adolescents and young adults (M = 19.8 years, SD = 2.6, 65.3% female) completing self-report measures assessing current perceived parenting practices, RS, emotion dysregulation, emotion suppression, social withdrawal, and depressive and trait-anxious symptoms. In latent-variable structural equation modelling, a latent construct of more positive (and fewer negative) perceived parenting practices was directly associated with offsprings’ lower level of depression and trait-anxiety symptoms. Also, there were indirect associations of parenting via RS, emotion dysregulation, suppression, and social withdrawal, regardless of whether the model focused on depressive or trait-anxious symptoms. The findings provide further support of the importance for adolescents and young adults to perceive that they experience warm and autonomy-supportive relationships with their parents (instead of rejecting, coercive, or psychologically controlling relationships); along with providing an extended model whereby anxious expectations of rejection associates with greater emotional difficulties through negative responses to difficult emotions and the tendency to withdraw from such experiences. Together, perceived parenting practices and rejection-related beliefs and responses seem to activate a pathway to elevated depressive and trait-anxiety symptoms.

Attachment and emotion regulation: A person‐centred examination and relations with coping with rejection, friendship closeness, and emotional adjustment

“…Descriptive statistics for all unstandardized measures and correlations between measures are reported in Table . These findings were in the expected directions and consistent with findings of previous studies (Brenning & Braet, ; Clear et al , ; Gardner & Zimmer‐Gembeck, ). More specifically, the correlations showed that attachment avoidance and anxiety were positively inter‐related and associated with higher emotion dysregulation, suppression, withdrawal, rumination, depressive, and anxious symptoms, but lower friendship closeness.…”

“…Our findings also support the converse to be true, that more elevated attachment insecurities coupled with greater maladaptive ER responses appear to be a significant risk factor for poorer overall functioning (Brenning & Braet, ; Clear et al , ; Gardner & Zimmer‐Gembeck, ; Mikulincer & Shaver, ; Zimmer‐Gembeck et al , ). Both the correlational and person‐centred approaches provide further empirical support that insecure internal working models are significant correlates of more maladaptive coping responses, perceiving less support from others, and greater emotional maladjustment.…”

“…Moreover, young women reported more social withdrawal and rumination, as well as greater friendship closeness, whereas young men reported more retribution. These findings support, but also extend, previous research findings suggesting more emotionality and hyperactivating strategies in response to interpersonal stress in young women and more suppression and deactivating strategies in young men (Gardner & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2018;Rudolph, 2002;Turpyn et al, 2015;Zimmer-Gembeck, 2015). Previous research has pointed to several explanations to account for such sex differences, including different socialization patterns to regulate emotional experiences, women's greater investment (and thus greater distress) in interpersonal experiences, a greater tendency to attribute poorer interpersonal experiences to some perceived deficit, and more negative appraisals in the coping process among young women (Brenning & Braet, 2013;Rudolph, 2002;Turpyn et al, 2015;Zimmer-Gembeck, 2015).…”

“…Coping, friendship closeness, and symptoms as correlates of cluster profiles It was also hypothesized that cluster profiles would differ in socio-emotional functioning, given that the distinctiveness of the attachment representation would guide how individuals respond, either adaptively or maladaptively, to perceived threat. Furthermore, hyperactivating and deactivating strategies have been associated with poorer social adjustment or more negative interpersonal functioning (Mikulincer et al, 2003) and poorer emotional adjustment (Brenning & Braet, 2013;Gardner & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2018). For example, some studies have found that securely attached individuals often report (or are observed to demonstrate) more adaptive and flexible coping and regulatory behaviours compared to those who are more insecure in their attachment (Dawson et al, 2014;Seiffge-Krenke & Beyers, 2005;Zimmer-Gembeck et al, 2017;Zimmermann, 1999).…”

A longitudinal model of rejection sensitivity and internalizing symptoms: Testing emotion regulation deficits as a mechanism and outcome of symptoms

“…Consistent with previous empirical work on RS and associated symptoms or disorders (Gao et al, 2017;Gardner & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2018;Marston et al, 2010;Watson & Nesdale, 2012;, and supporting Hypothesis 1, results from the multivariate path model revealed that young people with heightened RS reported more ER-deficits and, in turn, ER-deficits, specifically emotion dysregulation, predicted increased internalizing symptoms. However, the results from the path model of RS, ER-deficits, and internalizing symptoms revealed that, unlike the finding of both direct and indirect effects of RS on anxious symptoms, RS only had an indirect temporal effect on depressive symptoms via the ER-deficits.…”