The Influences of Conflict with Parents and Friends on Loneliness in Middle School and Its Gender Difference: A Cross-Lagged Analysis

HU Sai-Yuan; LIANG Li-Chan; YUAN Ke-Man; BIAN Yu-Fang

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2019, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (3) : 598-603.

The Influences of Conflict with Parents and Friends on Loneliness in Middle School and Its Gender Difference: A Cross-Lagged Analysis

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Loneliness refers to a kind of negative emotion experience, which comes from the perceived discrepancies between desired and actual social relationships. It almost exists through people’s whole life, and individuals could be likely to experience the highest level of loneliness in adolescence. Therefore, the loneliness of middle school students is worthy to be discussed. Previous researches pointed out that the loneliness could be associated with parent-child relationship, also the friendship quality and the number of friend were likely to relate to the sense of loneliness negatively. However, these researches tended to explore the protective factors of the loneliness, such as parental support and positive friendship quality. Hence, this research aimed to use a longitudinal research to explore the effect of two risk factors on loneliness, including the conflicts with parents and friends. In addition, there were rare researches examining gender differences in the influence of interpersonal conflicts on loneliness in adolescents. Based on Gender Schema Theory, boys could differ from girls in terms of the effects of the relation with parents or friends. For example, some girls might have stronger emotional needs than boys, and interpersonal conflicts could affect girls to a larger extent than boys. Hence, to explore the influences of the conflicts with parents and friends on loneliness in middle school, as well as its gender difference, a cross-lagged study was conducted. The participants, 1130 middle school students from Grade 7 to Grade 8(ages 13 years 5 months, SD = 7 months), were recruited from urban and rural areas of Beijing in 2015 and 2016, consisting of 565 girls and 565 boys. They were required to complete Parent-child Conflict Questionnaire in Chinese version, Loneliness Inventory and Friendship Quality Questionnaire, in order to assess the conflict with parents, the sense of loneliness and the conflict with friends once a year. We used multi-group cross-lagged models to examine the causal relationships between the conflicts with parents and friends, as well as loneliness. The model fitted well and there was a significant difference between the male model and female model. The results indicated that: (1) The conflict with parents, the conflict with friends and the loneliness of boys were significantly higher than those of girls; (2) There was a significant gender difference in terms of the relationships among the conflict with parents, the conflict with friends and loneliness. For boys, the conflict with friends and loneliness could predict each other significantly, otherwise, the conflict with parents could not predict subsequent loneliness. Moreover, the conflicts with parents and friends could not predict each other. For girls, the conflict with parents could predict subsequent loneliness significantly, but the conflict with friends could not predict loneliness. Additionally, the conflicts with parents and friends could predict each other; (3) Compared to the conflict with parents, boys’ loneliness was likely to be affected by the conflict with friends to a larger extent, while girls’ loneliness was likely to be affected by the conflict with parents more than the conflict with friends. The research implied that the interventions for loneliness of adolescents should be differentiated across gender.

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the conflict with parents / the conflict with friends / loneliness / cross-lagged

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The Influences of Conflict with Parents and Friends on Loneliness in Middle School and Its Gender Difference: A Cross-Lagged Analysis[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2019, 42(3): 598-603

References

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