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

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 a moderator of the associations between psychological control and relational and physical aggression. Participants were 271 elementary school students ages 8-12 (M = 931 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 well regulated children and the opposite pattern among emotionally dysregulated children. Implications for intervention and future research are discussed. (c) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.