Many skills in emotional competence are in place by middle childhood, however, research indicates that parents continue to play an important role in influencing an adolescent’s emotional understanding and regulation, which if poorly developed, are regarded as potential risk factors for both internalizing and externalizing problems (Eisenberg, 2020 Morris et al., 2007). Moreover, our study emphasizes the transdiagnostic importance of parents’ responses to anger for both externalizing and internalizing problems and also suggests different underlying mechanisms.Įmotional competence is central for healthy development in childhood and adolescence. Our findings suggest that assumptions regarding bidirectional relations should be emphasized much more in emotion socialization frameworks, particularly for the period of adolescence. Adolescent anger regulation was an important maintaining factor of parents’ responses to anger in later adolescence. However, we found more parent-directed effects with respect to the development of internalizing problems, whereas relations regarding externalizing problems were more adolescent-directed, i.e., adolescents’ externalizing problems and their anger regulation predicted changes in their parents’ responses to anger across time. Comparisons of different cross-lagged models revealed reciprocal rather than unidirectional effects. A sample of N = 634 adolescents (mostly 11–12 years at Time 1 50.6% male) and their parents (predominantly Caucasian with German nationality) completed questionnaires assessing parents’ responses to anger, adolescents’ anger regulation, and adolescents’ internalizing/externalizing problems at each wave. We collected three waves of longitudinal data (Grade 6, Grade 7, Grade 9) from multiple informants. It is also unclear whether the development of internalizing and externalizing problems have similar causal relations. However, substantially less is known about the interplay among these constructs during the developmental stage of adolescence, and longitudinal studies on causal relations (i.e., parent-directed, adolescent-directed, or reciprocal effects) are rare. Numerous studies have reported substantive correlations between anger socialization, children’s anger regulation, and internalizing/externalizing problems.

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