The Influence of Family Conflict and Social Support to Adolescent Depressed Mood and Deviant Behavior: the Compensatory or Protective Model

During the 1970s, the concern of Developmental Psychology had turned to the ability make individuals adapt successfully despite the presence of significant stress or adversity. They called the resources which help individuals to adapt successfully protective factors. The purpose of this study is to understand the influence of family conflict to adolescent depressed mood and diviant behavior, and also to see if social support would be a protective factor undering the stress of family conflict. This research hypothesize that gender, age, and family conflict are all related to adolescent depressed mood and deviant behavior. The two models of protective factors will be examined. The compensatory model hypothesizes that the protective factors have directly ameliorative effects while the protective model argues that the combined effect of risk factors with certain protective factors may reduce negative outcomes.he study conducted a survey with 1,416 adolescences in Taiwan. The findings of this study indicate that considering the influence of other variables, parent marital conflict and parent-adolescent conflict both can explain adolescent depressed mood and deviant behaviors: the more serious conflict, the higher depressed mood and more deviant behaviors is.Not all kinds of Social supports have compensatory effects to adolescent depressed mood and deviant behaviors: peer support has main effect to adolescent depressed mood while professional support has main effect to deviant behaviors. In the protective model, the interaction of parent marital conflict with professional support has protective-stabiliaing effects to adolescent depressed mood and deviant behaviors. The protective factors help maintain stability of outcomes. The interaction of parent-adolescent conflict with the support from adults outside the family has the same effects to adolescent depressed mood. The interaction of parent marital conflict with peer support has protective-reactive effects to adolescent depressed mood. The protective factors help individuals generally advantage, but much more so when stress levels are low. The interaction of parent-adolescent conflict with professional support has the same effects to adolescent depressed mood.