The role of family conflict and cohesion in adolescents’ social responsibility: Emotion regulation ability as a mediator

The social context is crucial for the adolescent development of self-regulatory skills and social responsibility. To understand the role of social context in adolescent development, the present study examined family predictors (i.e., family cohesion and conflict) of social responsibility, with emotion regulation ability as a mediating process. A total of 828 Chinese adolescents (35.6% female; mean age = 13.92 years, SD = 1.34) were recruited from major Chinese cities, including Hong Kong and Macau. Path analysis revealed that emotion regulation ability mediated the relation between family factors (i.e., family cohesion and family conflict) and social responsibility. That is, the ability to regulate emotions serves as a process between family factors and social responsibility. More specifically, family cohesion was positively associated with emotion regulation ability, whereas family conflict was negatively associated with emotion regulation ability. In turn, emotion regulation ability was positively associated with social responsibility. The results suggested that the family environment and adolescent’s emotion regulation ability are important contextual and intrapersonal factors contributing to their development of social responsibility. As an implication, policymakers and practitioners might allocate resources to enrich positive family interactions and cultivate emotional competency to support adolescents’ development of social responsibility.