Parental psychological control and aggression in youth: Moderating effect of emotion dysregulation

Article history: Received 17 March 2015 Received in revised form 18 February 2016 Accepted 20 February 2016 Available online 14 March 2016 Previous research shows that parent psychological control and child emotion dysregulation are both associated with the development of aggression in children. This longitudinal study sought to clarify these relations by examining emotion dysregulation as amoderator of the associations between psychological control and relational and physical aggression. Participants were 271 elementary school students ages 8–12 (M = 9.31 years; SD = 0.98) and their primary classroom teachers. Children completed measures of parental psychological control and emotion dysregulation at T1, while teachers rated children's relational and physical aggression at T1 and six months later at T2. Emotion dysregulation significantly moderated the association between psychological control and both forms of aggression,with no sex differences evident. Results suggest that psychologically controlling parenting strategies contribute to increased relational and decreased physical aggression among emotionally wellregulated children and the opposite pattern among emotionally dysregulated children. Implications for intervention and future research are discussed. © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.