Chapter 5 148 INTRODUCTION A long-standing question in parenting research has been the direction of effects: Who influences whom (the most)? (Bell, 1968; Pardini, 2008) Typically, this question has been studied by asking follow-up questions, such as: Is the parent mainly affecting their adolescent child? Or is the adolescent the most active agent and driving changes in parenting? Or are influences equal, with parents and adolescents reciprocally affecting each other? Reciprocity in the parent-adolescent relationship is now an established concept in many theories (Pardini, 2008; Sameroff, 2010; Soenens & Vansteenkiste, 2020), but could this contemporary theoretical consensus be inaccurate – at least for some families? (Richters, 2021) Although theories have stated that influences within the family may be inherently reciprocal (Soenens & Vansteenkiste, 2020), there are also theoretical notions and empirical studies suggesting that the direction of influence might differ from family to family. For example, theories on environmental sensitivity posit that people vary in their responsiveness to contextual influences, including the behavior of others (Greven et al., 2019; Pluess, 2015). This idea is supported by various empirical studies showing that individuals with higher trait levels of environmental sensitivity (i.e., ability to perceive, process, and respond to stimuli) and neuroticism (i.e., tendency to experience and inability to cope with negative emotions) respond more strongly to interpersonal experiences (Greven et al., 2019; Lionetti et al., 2019; Pluess et al., 2018). Additionally, adolescent girls are believed to be more sensitive to interpersonal experiences than adolescent boys (Rudolph, 2002). Furthermore, studies have shown that some adolescents reject their parents’ authority, leading to disobedience and possibly non-responsiveness to parental demands (Darling et al., 2007), and theories suggest that controlling and supportive parenting might only be effective in promoting adolescent well-being if such styles align with the (developmental) needs of the adolescent (Eccles et al., 1991). Thus, it is likely that parent-adolescent dyads are differentially responsive to each other and might be (a) characterized by reciprocal influences in some families, (b) largely driven by parental influences in other families (parent-driven), (c) largely driven by adolescent influences in still other families (adolescent-driven), and (d) occasionally non-existent (see Fig. 1). Heterogeneity in the Nature of Reciprocal Dynamics Even among families with reciprocal parent-adolescent influences, it is possible that the nature of these influences varies. To illustrate, when an adolescent feels sad, a parent in one family may make the adolescent feel better by providing more affection, whereas a
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