Concurrent and Lagged Synchrony in Parents’ and Adolescents’ Daily Positive and Negative Affect: Distinct Predictors Across Synchrony Types

Background: Parent-adolescent emotion dynamics are considered instrumental in clinical formulations of adolescent mental health; however, parent-adolescent affective synchrony in day-to-day life has received little empirical attention. Most research has relied on brief laboratory paradigms, which provide limited insight into how affective synchrony unfolds in everyday life and what factors drive its patterns.Method: In this preregistered study, 112 adolescents (12–18 years) and 108 parents completed baseline measures of closeness, responsiveness, insensitivity, depressive symptoms, and social anxiety symptoms. Then, for 28 subsequent days, participants reported their positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA). We used Bayesian linear mixed effects models to quantify concurrent, adolescent-lagged, and parent-lagged synchrony in PA and NA and tested whether mean-centered baseline measures predicted each synchrony type.Results: Parents and adolescents exhibited concurrent and adolescent-lagged synchrony in their daily PA and NA. Concurrent, adolescent-lagged, and parent-lagged synchrony in PA were only weakly correlated with those in NA. Adolescent-rated closeness positively predicted concurrent synchrony in PA, but not NA. Adolescent-rated parent insensitivity and adolescent social anxiety positively predicted synchrony in NA, but not PA. Parent-rated adolescent responsiveness positively predicted adolescent-lagged synchrony in PA. Adolescent-rated parent responsiveness and insensitivity predicted adolescent-lagged synchrony in NA. Conclusions: Concurrent and adolescent-lagged synchrony in PA and NA are differentially predicted by adolescents’ (but usually not parents’) perceptions of their relationship and social anxiety symptoms. In addition to enhancing theoretical understanding of parent-adolescent emotion dynamics, this study has important implications for how such dynamics should be targeted in clinical settings.