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Abstract

57 sets of middle-class parents and their 8- and 10-yr.-old children were asked to respond to an adult and child version of a semi-projective instrument. The instrument was designed to measure aggressive, dependent and withdrawal choices to frustrative stimuli. Ss were labelled as aggressive, dependent or withdrawing if 60% or more of their response choices fell in one of the three behavior categories. Families were classified as parent-concordant and parent-discordant on the basis of parental agreement in response choices. Children's scores were compared to parents' response scores and family classification. The data strongly supported the hypothesis that parental models influence children's behavior. Children from concordant or discordant families were significantly different in both dependency and withdrawal scores. Further analyses supported the interpretation that modeling is influenced by the combined effects of consistency across situations and concordance between parents.

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Parent-Child Similarity in Choice of Responses to Frustrating Situations

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