title: Positive and negative family emotional climate differentially predict youth anxiety and depression via distinct affective pathways.
abstract: A socioaffective specificity model was tested in which positive and negative affect differentially mediated relations of family emotional climate to youth internalizing symptoms. Participants were 134 7(th)-9(th) grade adolescents (65 girls; 86 % Caucasian) and mothers who completed measures of emotion-related family processes, experienced affect, anxiety, and depression. Results suggested that a family environment characterized by maternal psychological control and family negative emotion expressiveness predicted greater anxiety and depression, and was mediated by experienced negative affect. Conversely, a family emotional environment characterized by low maternal warmth and low positive emotion expressiveness predicted only depression, and was mediated through lowered experienced positive affect. This study synthesizes a theoretical model of typical family emotion socialization with an extant affect-based model of shared and unique aspects of anxiety and depression symptom expression.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Miami University, 100 Psychology Building, 90 N. Patterson Ave, Oxford, OH, 45056, USA, Luebbea2@miamioh.edu.
authors.forename: Aaron M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Luebbe
authors.forename: Debora J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Bell
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000339:Affect; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D005190:Family / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D012919:Social Behavior; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires