Parental Autonomy Support, Parental Psychological Control and Chinese University Students' Behavior Regulation: The Mediating Role of Basic Psychological Needs

Songqin Wei; Timothy Teo; Anabela Malpique; Adi Lausen

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.735570

Parental Autonomy Support, Parental Psychological Control and Chinese University Students' Behavior Regulation: The Mediating Role of Basic Psychological Needs

Front Psychol. 2022 Feb 18:12:735570. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.735570. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Songqin Wei¹, Timothy Teo², Anabela Malpique³, Adi Lausen^{4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom.
² Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
³ School of Education, Edith Cowan University, Perth, WA, Australia.
⁴ Department of Clinical Neuropsychology, Bamberg Hospital, Bamberg, Germany.
⁵ Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom.

Abstract

The present research examined relationships between parental autonomy support, parental psychological control, and Chinese emerging adults' autonomous regulation in their university studies as well as dysregulation in social media engagement. A total of 287 (102 female and 185 male) Chinese university students reported on their perceived parenting styles, psychological needs, and behavior regulation. Results showed that basic psychological need satisfaction was positively associated with parental autonomy support and autonomous regulation of learning; need frustration was positively correlated with parental psychological control and dysregulation in social media engagement. More importantly, psychological need frustration was a mediator of the relation between parental psychological control and dysregulation in social media engagement. Our findings suggest that students living in an autonomy-supportive familial environment tend to have satisfied psychological needs as well as autonomous learning behavior. Impairment of psychological needs could be one of the mechanisms through which psychologically controlling parenting was linked to dysregulation of social media use in Chinese culture.

Keywords: basic psychological need frustration; basic psychological need satisfaction; parental autonomy support; parental psychological control; self-determination theory.