(PS12-9) I Learned It by Watching You!: Low Distress Tolerance Mediates the Association Between Punitive Parental Reactions to Distress During Childhood and Distress During College

College students experience increasingly high levels of distress, which is associated with psychological disorders (e.g., depression and anxiety) and suicidality (Eskin et al., 2016). Students may experience more distress as a result of poor emotion socialization during childhood. The ways parents respond to their children’s distress may impact their child’s ability to tolerate these negative emotions, resulting in emotion dysregulation and experiential avoidance (Shaw & Starr, 2019; Shea & Coyne, 2011). No study has examined whether punitive parental responses to their child’s distress predict less distress tolerance (DT) for the child during college. We hypothesized that DT would mediate an association between punitive parental responses and greater distress among college students.

Students at a public college in the Northeastern US were surveyed about their parental responses to negative emotion in childhood (Fabes, Eisenberg, & Bernzweig, 1990), distress (Kessler et al., 2002), and DT (Simons & Gaher, 2002). Survey recruitment aimed to increase representation of minoritized students. Participants (N = 983) were relatively diverse, with 67% identifying as white, 18% as Hispanic or Latino, 14% as Asian, and 7% as Black or African American. Additionally, 70% identified as cisgender women, 21% as cisgender men, and 7% as another gender. Punitive parental reactions to distress (M = 2.77, SD = 1.66) predicted higher levels of distress (M = 14.28, SD = 8.46), b = 1.53, p < .001, and less DT (M = 3.14, SD = .80), b = -0.06, p < .001. Less DT predicted more distress, b = -3.57, p < .001. Punitive responses had a significant indirect effect on distress through DT (b = .21, p < .001).

Lower levels of DT mediated the effect of punitive parenting during childhood on higher levels of distress during college. Follow-up intensive longitudinal survey data are currently being collected to establish the direction of effects from DT to distress. Findings from this study could be used to develop interventions that target distress tolerance to prevent and treat high levels of distress experienced by college students.