Family, Cortisol Reactivity, and Emotional Insecurity: Moderated Mediation Models

Family conflict is a risk factor for a variety of outcomes, (e.g., suicidal ideation, Wright, 1985), including adolescents' emotional security. Emotional security describes adolescents’ feelings of vulnerability within their families, and is also a strong predictor of adjustment (Davies & Cummings, 1998). Limited research, however, has investigated the process through which family conflict affects adolescents’ emotional insecurity. Using a sample of 213 families, including mothers, fathers, and adolescents (Mage = 13.10 years), six moderated mediation models tested whether family conflict affects adolescents' emotional insecurity two years later, due to conflicts' effects on parent-adolescent relationship quality, and whether adolescents' cortisol reactivity moderates this indirect effect. The six models reflected the use of six different measures of parent-adolescent relationship quality. Results did not support the hypothesis that moderated mediation occurred. Subsequent analyses, however, suggested that parent-adolescent relationship quality mediates the effect of family conflict on adolescents' emotional insecurity may have occurred. Implications and suggested future work are discussed.