Podium Presentation 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

Feeling Loved: How Adolescents’ Daily Fluctuations In Feeling Loved Are Predicted By Parent-Reported Support And Conflict (#120)

John Coffey 1 , Mengya XIa 2 , Gregory Fosco 2
  1. Sewanee: The University of the South, Sewanee, TN, United States
  2. Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA

Feeling loved and connected to others is central to living the good life, yet little research has studied how dyadic behaviors explain daily fluctuations of feeling loved. We expected parent reported support and conflict to predict their adolescents’ felt love. We tested parent-adolescent dyads in a sample of 151 families (Adolescent Mage =14.60; 61.6% female) over a 21-day period. Using multilevel models, we disentangled parental support and conflict in relation to adolescents’ daily reports about felt loved by the parent at within-person (daily variability) and between-person (average levels) levels. At the between-person level, higher average parental support across days and baseline closeness with parents were associated with feeling more loved by parents; yet, average parent-adolescent conflict was not associated with feeling loved. Adolescents felt more loved on days when they received more support from parents and on days with lower than usual conflict. A significant within-day interaction indicated that the importance of days’ parental support was greater on high conflict days; but, when parents were highly supportive of their adolescents, the difference between high- and low-conflict days was negligible. Given the within-person nature of this study, the implications suggest intervention points for parenting techniques that focus on support.