Early Adolescence Social Withdrawal as a Predictor of Late Adolescence Autonomy and Relatedness with Romantic Partners

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Elenda T. Hessel, Megan M. Schad, Joanna Chango, Ann Spilker, Caroline White, & Joseph P. AllenUniversity of Virginia.

We would like to thank the National Institute of Child Health & Human Developmentfor funding awarded to Joseph P. Allen, Principal Investigator, (9 R01 HD058305-A11) for funding to conduct this study as well as for the write-up of this study.

IntroductionPremises:•Adolescence is a critical period for learning life long skills, including important social skills. •One such skill set is developing the ability to establish autonomy in relationships while still maintaining a sense of relatedness.•Teens who are withdrawn from their peers during this period are at a greater risk of missing out on these life lessons.

Why are Autonomy and Relatedness important?•Implications for social adjustment, engagement in delinquency, and psychopathology. •Linked to resistance to peer pressure, higher self esteem, and better adjustment to separation and the transition to college.•Important predictor of success in future romantic relationships—has been found to predict both dating competence and marital adjustment.

What predicts Autonomy and Relatedness?•There is still a relative dearth of knowledge as to what factors play a role in promoting or inhibiting adolescents ability to simultaneously establish autonomy and relatedness.•One possibility is that adolescents’ who withdraw from social interactions at an early age miss out on critical opportunities to develop these skills.•As such, this study seeks to investigate the role of mid-adolescent social withdrawal in predicting capacity to establish autonomy and relatedness in later romantic relationships.

Hypotheses.

Social withdrawal at age 15 will predict an increase in behaviors that undermine autonomy and relatedness at age 18.

Social withdrawal at age 15 will predict an decrease in behaviors that promote autonomy and relatedness at age 18.

MethodConclusions

Results

Participants

• Multi-method longitudinal data were obtained from 58 teenagers along with their best friends and romantic partners.

• 57% Caucasian, 36% African American, and 7% Mixed or Other ethnicity.

•Median household income was within the $20,000 to $29,000 range.•.

•Target teen mean age was 15.12 years at Time 1, 18.09 at Time 2. •Best Friends mean age was 14.95 at Time 1.•.

•Romantic partner mean age was 18.25 years at Time 2.•.

that undermined both autonomy and relatedness (β=.38, p<.01, see Table 1) and a decrease in teen behaviors that promote relatedness (β=-.29, p<.05, see Table 2). Each of these predictions was obtained after accounting for prior levels of the relevant behaviors as observed with close peers at age 15.

Procedures.

Time 1 (Age 15)•Target teen and their best friend filled out questionnaires about their relationship and each other.•Target teen and their best friend engaged in a 8 minute interaction, during which the dyads were asked to discuss a hypothetical dilemma requiring them to come to a consensus on decisions they disagreed on. The target teen’s behaviors promoting autonomy and relatedness with their best friend during this taskwere observed. Time 2 (Age 18)•Target teen and their romantic partner engaged in an 8 minute interaction task similar to the one completed at age 15. •This time, target teens’ behaviors promoting autonomy and relatedness with their romantic partners were assessed.

Measures.

Social WithdrawalBest friend rated social withdraw was assessed Time 1 using the Withdrawal scale from the Pupil Evaluation Inventory (Pekarik, Prinz, Liebert, Weintraub, & Neale, 1976). This 9-item scale asked best friends to evaluate how true statements were about the target teen on a 3-point likert scale, ranging from “Not True” to “Very Often or Often True”. Interrater reliability on this scale has been shown to be high, ranging from .61 to .85.

Autonomy & Relatedness Coding SystemEach adolescent-partner dyad participated in an 8-minute videotaped task in which they were presented with a hypothetical dilemma. Teens and their interaction partners were asked to first separately make decisions to solve the dilemmas, and were then asked to work together with their partner to try to resolve any differences in their choices and to come up with a consensus. The Autonomy-Relatedness Coding System for Peer Interactions was used for the Teen-Peer interactions, and an adapted version of it was created and used for the romantic partner dyads to code these interactions (Allen et al. 2001). The coding system employed (J. P. Allen et al. 2000, unpublished manuscript, 1994) yields ratings for the adolescent’s overall behavior toward their relational partner in the interaction. The frequency and intensity of teen’s behaviors promoting autonomy and relatedness (e.g., confidence in stating one’s opinions and validating partner’s statements) as well as their behaviors undermining autonomy and relatedness (e.g., over personalizing arguments and ignoring) were assessed. High scores on these scales indicate increased frequency and intensity of the behaviors in question, whereas low scores indicate very few and low intensity behaviors.

• Adolescent social withdrawal may predict difficulties with establishing autonomy and relatedness in later relationships.

• Social withdrawal may limit adolescents’ opportunities to learn how to interact in a way that allows them to have close relationships while still maintaining their independence—an ability that may be crucial for some aspects of psychological wellbeing—as well as adjustment within a romantic relationship.

Future Directions• Investigate whether intervening with socially withdrawn adolescents by

promoting their engagement in social relationships results in more successful establishment of autonomy and relatedness in later relationships.

• Continue to search for additional predictors of autonomy and relatedness.

Results revealed that teen’s best friend-rated social withdrawal at 15 predicted a variety of behaviors at age 18 that are promoting and undermining of autonomy and relatedness within a romantic relationship. Overall, teen’s social withdrawal predicted an increase in teens behaviors