Óscar F. García

Complutense University of Valencia

Psychology, Education, and Human Development in Family and School field

Participants: A. Fernando Pérez-Gramaje1; José Antonio Martínez Escudero1; Fangzhou Chen1; Óscar F. García1

1University of Valencia

Symposium Summary

Introduction: In this symposium, new contributions on the different effectiveness that parental socialization styles have when it comes to favouring the psychosocial development of children are analysed. For years, the process of parental socialization has been studied, examining through parental actions of affection and severity (theoretically orthogonal). At present, there is a debate on whether the authoritative style (affection and severity) is always effective in all cultural contexts to ensure that children succeed in school and present a good psychosocial development. Methods: Different works examine which of the four parental styles (i.e., indulgent, authoritative, authoritarian or neglectful) is the one that is related to better results, in terms of psychosocial development in different situations such as parents who have aggressive or underperforming children or the socialization of parents in a non-Western cultural context such as China. It also examines not only the developmental impact of socialization in adolescence but also its impact on psychosocial adjustment and competence in adult life. Results: In general, a common pattern is observed in the short and long term, in which indulgent parenting style (i.e., affection without severity) is associated with equal or even better scores than authoritative style (i.e., affection with severity) on different indicators of psychosocial development, while unaffected styles (i.e., authoritative and negligent) are associated with poor psychosocial development. Discussion: The results have important implications for the areas of psychology and education. The parental strategy based on imposition and severity, widely recommended by experts in psychology and education for years, could have a negative impact.

Short CV

A developmental and educational psychologist at the Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, University of Valencia, Spain. His line of research and publications focus on the study of development throughout the life cycle, family socialization, self-esteem, academic motivation in school, adolescence and adulthood, peer relations and school adjustment, and measurement techniques (self-esteem and parental socialization). He is examining the cross-cultural validity of the four typologies parental socialization model. The project is financed by different public organizations (the European Social Fund, the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities of the Spanish Government, and the Generalitat Valenciana). In recent years, he has published research articles in scientific journals such as Psychology and Health, Computers in Human Behavior, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Psychosocial Intervention, European Journal of Psychology Applied to Legal Context, Frontiers in Psychology, Revista de Psicodidáctica or Anales de Psicología. He is also an external reviewer in journals of international diffusion, indexed in the Web of Science, such as Journal of Happiness Studies, Sustainability or Child Abuse & Neglect.

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