Warmth, competence, and wellbeing: The relationship between parental support, needs satisfaction, and interpersonal sensitivity in Italian emerging adults

ABSTRACT

In the Italian context, parental bonding has great relevance in promoting satisfaction of emerging adults’ psychological needs, impacting their wellbeing, also in terms of interpersonal sensitivity. Aims: to analyse, in 497 emerging adults: the direct influence of maternal and paternal bonding on young interpersonal sensitivity and life satisfaction; indirect influence, mediated by the influence of the parents–offspring relationship on the need for relatedness, autonomy, and competence.

SEM analysis showed that parental bonding characterized by high warmth and low over-protection could help satisfaction of all three needs; only paternal bonding is directly and positively related with life satisfaction and negatively with interpersonal sensitivity; satisfaction of needs could significantly improve life satisfaction. Implications are discussed in the article.

KEYWORDS:

• Emerging adults
• interpersonal sensitivity
• psychological basic needs
• social determination theory
• parental style

Author Affiliation and research interest

Martina Smorti is Associate Professor of Developmental and Educational Psychology at the Department of Surgical, Medical and Molecular Pathology and Critical Care Medicine, University of Pisa (Italy). Her research areas focus on different aspects of developmental psychology, particularly regarding risk and protective factors in adolescence and emerging adulthood and the psychological and relational risk and protective factors envolved in transition to parenthood.

Luigia Simona Sica is Associate Professor of Developmental and Educational Psychology at Department of Humanistic Studies, University of Naples Federico II (Italy). Her research areas include developmental psychology, vocational and personal identity formation process in adolescence and emerging adulthood

Sebastiano Costa is Assistant Professor of Developmental and Educational Psychology at the Department of Psychology, University of Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’ – Caserta (Italy). His research interests focus on the motivational processes and emotional dynamics underlying the relation between contextual factor and psychological well‐being in several settings.

Silvia Biagioni is post-graduate research collaborator of Developmental and Educational Psychology at the Department of Surgical, Medical and Molecular Pathology and Critical Care Medicine, University of Pisa (Italy). Her research areas focus on risk and protective factors in emerging adulthood.

Francesca Liga is Associate Professor of Developmental and Educational Psychology at the Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine (DIMED), University of Messina (Italy). Her research areas focus on different aspects of developmental psychology, particularly regarding risk and protective factors in adolescence and the process of adolescents’ individuation.

Authors’ Contribution

MS mainly wrote the introduction of the article. MS shared co-first authorship with LSS

LSS mainly wrote the discussion of the article

SC participated in data analysis and revised critically the manuscript for important intellectual content

SB gave substantial contribution to acquisition of data and collaborated in writing the introduction

FL performed data analysis mainly wrote the data analysis and results of the article

Approval/ethical statement

The Institutional Review Boards (IRB) of the University of Pisa and the University of Messina approved this study which was conducted in conformity with the guidelines for the ethical treatment of human participants of the Italian Association of Psychology.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author, [L.S.S.]. The data are not publicly available due to their containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants. The data available from the corresponding author on reasonable request (L.S.S. [email protected]).

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.