The relation between parent-child attachment and adolescent intent attributions: The mediating role of self-esteem

At present, violence and bullying events on domestic campuses take place frequently, attracting the great attention of parents, schools and the whole society. While we are concerned about the aggressive behaviours of young people, we should also pay attention to the internal factors that lead to these explicit behaviours. Hostile attribution is one of the important indicators. Inthe current study, we have recruited 285 students from a junior middle school in Xiamen to figure out the relationship among parent-child attachment, hostile attributions and self-esteem. We used Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA), Asher's Assessment of Intent Attributions and Rosenberg's self-esteem. The results showed that: (1) grades, single-child family or not, urban household registration or not had significant effects on subjects’ parent-child attachment, self-esteem, hostile attributions: The level of self-esteem of students in second grade was significantly higher than that of the first grade; Students in single-child families had a higher quality of parent-child attachment, self-esteem and less hostile attributions; Children in rural household registration were more likely to show hostility in physically provocative circumstances, while urban children are more likely to show hostility in a contextual relationship. (2) Parent-child attachment showed a significant negative correlation with hostility attribution and a positive correlation with self-esteem, while the level of self-esteem was negatively correlated with students’ hostility attributions. (3) Self-esteem can play a mediating role in the relationship between parent-child attachment (including father-child attachment and mother-child attachment) and hostile attribution, especially in pro-social context self-esteem plays a complete mediating role.