The relationship of social identifications of youth and family attachment and parental behaviour

• Main Authors: Dušanić Srđan, Lakić Siniša, Turjačanin Vladimir
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philosophy, Institute of Psychology 2018-01-01
• Series: Psihološka Istraživanja
• Subjects: social identifications; family attachment; parental behaviours; youth
• Online Access: https://scindeks-clanci.ceon.rs/data/pdf/0352-7379/2018/0352-73791801091D.pdf

Although there is a plethora of studies on the dynamics of social identifications, we found only a few which associate this dynamics with the perceived family relationships. This lack of knowledge has motivated us to explore the extent to which social identifications are associated with family attachment and the perception of parental behaviour. We conducted our study on a sample of 325 young people (58% females) of the Serbian ethnicity from the Republic of Srpska. The participants were secondary school students and university students (aged 16 to 25). Social identifications were measured by the question: 'To what extent is belonging to the following group important to you?', with nine target groups provided: the family, friends, ethnicity, religion, Republic of Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Balkans, Europe, mankind/ humanity. In addition to the questions related to demographic variables, the battery comprised the modified, family-targeted version of the Experiences in Close Relationship Inventory scale, with the subscales of anxiety and avoidance (Kamenov & Jelić, 2003) and the questionnaire of fathers' and mothers' parental behaviour with the dimensions of parental support, restrictive control, and permissiveness (PBQ29; Keresteš, Brković, Jagodić & Greblo, 2012). Exploratory factor analysis of social identifications yielded a hierarchical factor structure with three lower-order factors we labelled as ethno-religious identification, global social identification and identification with primary social groups. We observed only weak correlations of the family-related variables with social identifications. In particular, we found that attachment variables (anxiety positively and avoidance negatively) could be considered as the predictors of different social identifications. We discuss our findings in light of the previous research.