The additive and interactive effects of parenting and children's personality on externalizing behaviour

Abstract

Parenting practices have been previously linked to childhood externalizing behaviour. However, little attention has been given to the potential effect of individual personality differences among children on this relation. The current study assesses the additive effects of children's personality characteristics and explores the moderating effects of children's personality on relations between parenting practices and childhood externalizing behaviour using a proportional stratified sample of 599 nonclinical elementary-schoolaged children. Multiple regression analyses reveal that in the mother data as well as in the father data, dysfunctional parenting and the children's personality characteristics Benevolence, Conscientiousness, and Extraversion were directly related to outcomes consistent with an additive model of their effects. Significant interactions indicate that children with low scores on Benevolence who were exposed to overreactive discipline practices exhibited higher levels of externalizing behaviour. Children characterized by low scores on Conscientiousness who were exposed to coercive parenting behaviour showed elevated levels of externalizing behaviour. These results suggest that integrating children's personality characteristics within parenting models can improve the understanding of the aetiology of childhood externalizing problem behaviour. The implications of such integrations for intervention are discussed.

Behavioral problems in children with motor and intellectual disabilities: Prevalence and associations with maladaptive personality and marital relationship

“…Results showed no association of maladaptive personality traits with anxiety. Taken together, results in children with MID are similar to results of studies in a normal population in that lower scores on Compulsivity (Prinzie et al, 2003;Van Leeuwen et al, 2004), higher scores on Emotional Instability (Tackett, 2006) and Disagreeableness (Prinzie et al, 2010) are risk factors for developing behavioral problems, supporting the vulnerability model. These maladaptive personality traits may function as a diathesis by predisposing a child with MID for developing behavioral problems under specific circumstances.…”

“…However, previous research has mainly focused on the associations between behavioral problems and measures of adaptive personality traits. For example, research in representative community samples has identified consistent relationships between low Conscientiousness, low Agreeableness, high Extraversion and to a lesser extent high Neuroticism (Prinzie et al, 2003;Prinzie, Van der Sluis, De Haan, & Deković , 2010;Tackett, 2006;Van Leeuwen, Mervielde, Braet, & Bosmans, 2004) and behavioral problems. Given the importance of personality in the forthcoming DSM-V (Widiger, 2011;Widiger & Mullins-Sweatt, 2009) and the fact that maladaptive personality traits have not yet been studied in children with MID, the third aim of this study was to investigate the association of behavioral problems with maladaptive personality traits.…”

“…A third aim was to examine of the association between behavioral problems and maladaptive personality traits. Based on the literature on personality traits in normal populations and in line with the vulnerability model, we hypothesized that low scores on Compulsivity, high scores on Emotional Instability and high scores on Disagreeableness would be related to behavioral problems (Prinzie et al, 2003(Prinzie et al, , 2010Tackett, 2006;Van Leeuwen et al, 2004). Fourth, we aimed to investigate the relationship between behavioral problems and marital stress and conflict.…”

“…These maladaptive personality traits may function as a diathesis by predisposing a child with MID for developing behavioral problems under specific circumstances. One mechanism that has been put forward is the effect of the interaction between personality traits and parenting on the development of behavioral problems (e.g., Prinzie et al, 2003Prinzie et al, , 2010. These interactions may reflect an evocative transactional process between the child and the parents (Roberts & Caspi, 2003).…”

“…Children who score high on Disagreeableness may evoke more negative parenting which may result in more behavior problems. Therefore, in clinical interventions it is essential to build upon a goodness-of-fit between the child's personality and child management strategies (Prinzie et al, 2003). For example, excessive or negative discipline may evoke antisocial behavior in a child characterized by high levels of Disagreeableness instead of reducing antisocial behavior.…”