Emotional security and cognitive appraisals mediate the relationship between parents' marital conflict and adjustment in older adolescents

Abstract

In this study, the authors evaluated a model of the effects of parental conflict witnessed in childhood on psychosocial adjustment in 175 college students. Using this model, which integrated the cognitive-contextual framework (J. H. Grych & F. D. Fincham, 1990) and the emotional-security hypothesis (P. T. Davies & E. M. Cummings, 1994), the authors proposed that both cognitive appraisal of parents' conflict and emotional security mediate the conflict-adjustment link in late adolescence. Furthermore, the authors proposed that cognitive appraisals are associated with emotional security. The results suggested that appraisals and security were both important mediators in the model but that they were not related to each other. Instead, there appeared to be parallel, yet separate, cognitive and emotional channels through which exposure to parental conflict in childhood can have detrimental effects on later adjustment.