Parents, if you don\u2019t want your child to take life too seriously, lay off criticizing them.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the conclusion psychology major Haley Branback reached as a result of her research examining how parental expectations and criticisms affect their children\u2019s sense of responsibility later in life. She gave a poster presentation on her project at 51ÁÔÆæ\u2019s Undergraduate Research Symposium this spring.<\/p>\n
\u201cI focused on parental expectations and criticisms and how their children perceive them,\u201d Branback explained. \u201cA lot of people came up to me at the poster presentation because they\u2019re parents and they were interested.\u201d<\/p>\n
Branback works in psychology professor Han Joo Lee\u2019s lab, which focuses on research into mental health disorders including anxiety, phobias and obsessive compulsive disorder. Branback also works with children, so she combined her work interests and her research to test whether parental expectations and criticisms could lead to an overvalued sense of responsibility in their children.<\/p>\n
An overvalued sense of responsibility is a key feature of OCD. It can be highly related to perfectionism and general distress, said Taylor Davine, a 51ÁÔÆæ psychology doctoral student and Branback\u2019s mentor for the project.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I broke a glass and didn\u2019t clean it up very well, and someone got cut, most people would feel a sense of responsibility \u2013 \u2018Oh, that was my fault,\u2019\u201d Davine said. \u201cBut someone who has an overvalued sense of responsibility would go beyond that. You\u2019re always worried that maybe you did something wrong despite a lack of evidence for supporting the idea, and experience strong urges to prevent a possible disaster that would be attributable to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
To conduct her research, Branback pulled data from a survey battery from a larger study about OCD. She looked at the results of more than 300 51ÁÔÆæ students and examined whether their parents\u2019 expectations and criticisms had any impact on their sense of responsibility.<\/p>\n
They did, Branback said. But then she separated expectations from criticisms by controlling for one trait versus the other.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe actually found that expectations did not<\/em> lead to an overvalued sense of responsibility, but criticisms did,\u201d she said. Moreover, it wasn\u2019t actually the criticism itself at fault; it was the students\u2019 perceptions of their parents\u2019 criticism that determined whether they had an overvalued sense of responsibility.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we recruit students from university, they typically are no longer living with their parents, so it\u2019s really their perception of how they were raised,\u201d Davine said. \u201cWe can\u2019t go back and ask their parents if they were critical or if they had high expectations. Even if we did, it may not even matter, because what matters is the way the child perceived the parenting.\u201d<\/p>\n The findings fascinated several judges at the symposium, who were parents themselves. To avoid children developing an overvalued sense of responsibility, Branback suggests, parents should check with their children about how any criticisms are being received. She would like to expand her research and study younger children \u2013 perhaps in middle school \u2013 to compare children\u2019s perceptions of their parents\u2019 criticism against reality.<\/p>\n \u201cI think with younger children, it can really affect the rest of their career and their path,\u201d Branback said.<\/p>\n Branback herself plans to attend graduate school after she graduates from 51ÁÔÆæ in December of this year. She hopes to become a school psychologist and draw on her experiences doing research at 51ÁÔÆæ.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s really important to get involved in research. It helps you learn more about psychology, and pursuing your career,\u201d Branback said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Parental criticism can lead to an overvalued sense of responsibility — a key feature of obsessive compulsive disorder — student researcher Haley Branback found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":785,"featured_media":35856,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[174,175],"tags":[250],"section":[122,124],"display_categories":[115,116],"related-coverage":[],"uwmnews-feed":[158,161],"class_list":["post-35855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-research","tag-student-success","section-campus-community","section-students","display_categories-top-story-secondary","display_categories-top-story-section","uwmnews-feed-letters-science","uwmnews-feed-hard-science"],"yoast_head":"\n