The quality of mother‐adolescent disclosure: Links with predictors and adolescents’ sociomoral outcomes

Abstract

Previous work on adolescents' disclosure has focused on the frequency of disclosure to parents, but not the quality of that disclosure. Therefore, there is a need to examine factors that predict the quality of adolescents' disclosure, as well as the consequences of the quality for adolescents' outcomes.In this study, 100 adolescents (M age = 14.27 years; 57 girls; 70.7% White, European American) disclosed to mothers a recent past event in which they felt excluded; the videotaped and transcribed conversations were rated for indices of the quality of disclosure (i.e., the quality of elaboration and emotion discussed). Adolescents completed measures of sociomoral behavior and parental warmth and mothers completed measures of their moral identity, circle of moral regard, and moral socialization. The quality of adolescents' disclosure was related to adolescents' sociomoral outcomes (including prosocial behaviors, empathy, and sociability).Adolescents' disclosure quality was predicted by gender and by aspects of mothers' moral sophistication. Findings highlight the importance of high-quality self-disclosure by adolescents for promoting adolescents' moral development, potentially because such disclosure gives parents the opportunity to help adolescents cope with challenging peer experiences potentially through emotion coaching and | 783 LAIBLE Et AL.

Moral cognition in adolescence and emerging adulthood.

“…How prosocial moral reasoning and behavioral tendencies are socialized within families during adolescence has attracted research interest (Laible, Carlo, & Padilla-Walker, 2019). The intuition that prosocial behavior is related to parental socialization of a certain kind, such as authoritative parenting style, relational qualities of warmth and sensitivity, discursive communication within the family, parental control and inductive discipline, monitoring of behavior, and the quality of solicitation and disclosure of information about activities, among other variables, is largely confirmed (Carlo et al, 2007;Hastings et al, 2007;Laible, Conover, et al, 2019;Laird & Zeringue, 2019;Mounts & Allen, 2019;Padilla-Walker et al, 2012). Sometimes the influence of parenting on prosocial outcomes is mediated partially through affective and social cognitive variables, such as sympathy, empathic concern, and perspective taking (e.g., Davis & Carlo, 2018;Shen et al, 2013;van der Graaff et al, 2018).…”

A Psychometric Examination of the Abbreviated Version of the Parenting Styles Scale Using a Sample of Chilean Adolescents

“…Warmth and support in parenting promote behavioural safety and psychological resilience in adolescents [ 32 , 33 , 34 ]. Also, self-disclosure in adolescence allows parents to learn about their children’s experiences, activities, and behaviours [ 35 , 36 ], favouring the prevention of risky behaviours [ 37 ]. In this sense, self-disclosure scarcely occurs in rejecting and indifferent families, and it has been observed that victims of bullying who present suicidal ideation do not inform their parents [ 38 ].…”