Informant discrepancies in perceived parental psychological control, adolescent autonomy, and relatedness psychological needs

Abstract

Framed from Self-Determination Theory and Family Systems Theory, the present multi-informant study sought to contribute to a better understanding of the relations between discrepancies in parents’ and adolescents’ perceptions of parental psychological control and satisfaction of adolescents’ needs for autonomy and relatedness. Participants were 190 Italian intact families in which an adolescent was present (Mage = 16.47 years, SDage = 1.41). Our findings highlighted that: (1) adolescents generally tended to perceive higher levels of psychological control than their parents reported; (2) adolescents tended to rate mothers’ psychological control higher than the mothers themselves, whereas adolescent reports of fathers’ psychological control were not higher than the fathers’ self-reports; (3) the discrepancies between fathers and adolescents in their perceptions of fathers’ psychological control were associated with lower levels of satisfaction of the adolescents’ need for relatedness, while the discrepancies between mothers and adolescents were associated with lower levels of satisfaction of the adolescents’ need for autonomy.