Impact of parental control and ToM strategies on children's evaluations on personal domain situations

• Grant number: 21/03852-4
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: November 01, 2021
• End date: October 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Human Development Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Luciana Maria Caetano
• Grantee: Luciana Maria Caetano
• Host Institution: Instituto de Psicologia (IP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: BETÂNIA ALVES VEIGA DELL AGLI

Abstract

Personal domain events concern a set of actions that the individual considers outside the area of social regulation. These are aspects of private life that when judged are neither right nor wrong, as they are individual preferences and choices. The present research project intends to investigate the impact of different strategies of parental control and TOM on the assessment that children make regarding events in the personal domain. The development of the notion of agency and the right to personal control of choices depends on the children's success in situations of parental conflict. The socioeconomic and cultural variables, the variations in the child's TOM level, as well as the type of parental strategy used by the family in conflicts of personal domain, will be the independent variables of the study, while the decision-making of resistance to parental authority, the attribution of recurring emotions to this type of conflict and the judgment of the type of strategy used by the mothers, will constitute the set of dependent variables of the study. The participants will be children of 5, 7 and 10 years old, and the instruments will be dilemmas about conflicts of personal domain and different control strategies and selected TOM instruments. The impact analysis will be measured through repeated measures ANOVA. It is expected that the high level of TOM will imply responses of greater resistance to parental authority, and that parental strategies of external control will imply obedience to parental authority. (AU)