According to Robey, Cohen, and Epstein (1988), children may hold a naïve theory of affection, whereby they believe that their parents’ affection for them is a finite resource for which they must compete against their siblings. Parents, conversely, are unlikely to view their own affection in the same way. Although research on naïve theories is often conducted with youngsters, we speculated that even adult children may perceive that they compete with their siblings for their parents’ affection, and we tested the naïve theory of affection in a study of 115 dyads of adult men and their adult sons. As hypothesized, the sons’ numbers of brothers and sisters were associated inversely with sons’ reports of how much affection they received from their fathers but were unrelated to fathers’ reports. Fathers’ and sons’ reports of fathers’ affection were also linearly related to each other, but fathers reported being more affectionate with their sons than their sons reported them being. Results suggest that naïve theorizing about parental affection is not limited to young children but continues to affect familial experience in adulthood.
Anderson, K. G. , Kaplan, H. , Lam, D. , & Lancaster, J. (1999). Parental care by genetic and step fathers I: Reports by Xhosa high school students . Evolution and Human Behavior, 20, 405-431 .
2.
Beatty, M. J. , & Dobos, J. A. (1993). Adult males’ perceptions of confirmation and relational partner communication apprehension: Indirect effects of fathers on sons’ partners . Communication Quarterly, 41, 66-76 .
3.
Beatty, M. J. , Zelley, J. R. , Dobos, J. A. , & Rudd, J. E. (1994). Fathers’ trait verbal aggressiveness and argumentativeness as predictors of adult sons’ perceptions of fathers’ sarcasm, criticism, and verbal aggressiveness . Communication Quarterly, 42, 407-415 .
4.
Booth-Butterfield, M. , & Trotta, M. R. (1994). Attributional patterns for expressions of love . Communication Reports, 7, 119-129 .
5.
Buerkel, R. A. (1996, November). Intimacy in the father-son dyad. Presented to Speech Communication Association,San Diego, CA .
6.
Buerkel-Rothfuss, N. L. , & Yerby, J. (1981, October). Two studies in member perceptions of family communication: Part I: Perceived similarity in intergenerational communication style. Part II: A factor analytic study of family communication patterns. Presented to National Council on Family Relations, Milwaukee, WI.
7.
Comstock, J. (1994). Parent-adolescent conflict: A developmental approach . Western Journal of Communication, 58, 263-282 .
8.
Daly, M. , & Wilson, M. (1980). Discriminative parental solicitude: A biological perspective . Journal of Marriage and the Family, 42, 277-288 .
9.
Daly, M. , & Wilson, M. (1987). The Darwinian psychology of discriminative parental solicitude . Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 35, 91-144 .
10.
Dawkins, R. (1989). The selfish gene (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press .
11.
Floyd, K. (2001). Human affection exchange: I. Reproductive probability as a predictor of men’s affection with their sons . Journal of Men’s Studies, 10, 39-50 .
12.
Floyd, K. (2002). Human affection exchange: V. Attributes of the highly affectionate . Communication Quarterly, 50, 135-152 .
13.
Floyd, K. , & Mikkelson, A. C. (2002, November). Psychometric properties of the affectionate communication index in research on personal relationships. Presented to National Communication Association, New Orleans, LA .
14.
Floyd, K. , & Morman, M. T. (1997). Affectionate communication in nonromantic relationships: Influences of communicator, relational, and contextual factors . Western Journal of Communication, 61, 279-298 .
15.
Floyd, K. , & Morman, M. T. (1998). The measurement of affectionate communication . Communication Quarterly, 46, 144-162 .
16.
Floyd, K. , & Morman, M. T. (2000). Affection received from fathers as a predictor of men’s affection with their own sons: Tests of the modeling and compensation hypotheses . Communication Monographs, 67, 347-361 .
17.
Floyd, K. , & Morman, M. T. (2002). Human affection exchange: III. Discriminative parental solicitude in men’s affectionate communication with their biological and nonbiological sons . Communication Quarterly, 49, 310-327 .
18.
Floyd, K. , & Morman, M. T. (2003). Human affection exchange: II. Affectionate communication in father-son relationships . Journal of Social Psychology, 143, 599-612 .
19.
Floyd, K. , & Morr, M. C. (2003). Human affection exchange: VII. Affectionate communication in the sibling/spouse/sibling-in-law triad . Communication Quarterly, 51, 247-261 .
20.
Floyd, K. , Sargent, J. E. , & Di Corcia, M. (2004). Human affection exchange: VI. Further tests of reproductive probability as a predictor of men’s affection with their adult sons . Journal of Social Psychology, 144, 191-206 .
21.
Franiuk, R. , Cohen, D. , & Pomerantz, E. M. (2002). Implicit theories of relationships: Implications for relationship satisfaction and longevity . Personal Relationships, 9, 345-367 .
22.
Hawkins, A. J. , & Dollahite, D. C. (Eds.). (1997). Generative fathering: Beyond deficit perspectives. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage .
23.
Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley .
24.
Hess, J. A. (2003). Measuring distance in personal relationships: Development of a perceived relational distance index . Personal Relationships, 10, 197-215 .
25.
King, C. E. , & Christensen, A. (1983). The relationship events scale: A Guttman scaling of progress in courtship . Journal of Marriage and the Family, 45, 671-678 .
26.
Klagsbrun, F. (1992). Mixed feelings: Love, hate, rivalry, and reconciliation among brothers and sisters. New York: Bantam .
27.
Lee, J. (1987). The flying boy: Healing the wounded man. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications .
28.
Martin, M. M. , & Anderson, C. M. (1995). The father-young adult relationship: Interpersonal motives, self-disclosure, and satisfaction . Communication Quarterly, 42, 119-130 .
29.
Morman, M. T. , & Floyd, K. (1999). Affectionate communication between fathers and young adult sons: Individual- and relational-level correlates . Communication Studies, 50, 294-309 .
30.
Morman, M. T. , & Floyd, K. (2002). A ‘changing culture of fatherhood’: Effects on affectionate communication, closeness, and satisfaction in men’s relationships with their fathers and their sons . Western Journal of Communication, 66, 395-411 .
31.
Morris, S. C. , Taplin, J. E. , & Gelman, S. A. (2000). Vitalism in naïve biological thinking . Developmental Psychology, 36, 582-595 .
32.
Owen, W. F. (1987). The verbal expression of love by women and men as a critical communication event in personal relationships . Women’s Studies in Communication, 10, 15-24 .
33.
Palkovitz, R. (2002). Involved fathering and men’s adult development: Provisional balances. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum .
34.
Piaget, J. , & Szeminska, A. (1952). The child’s conception of number. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul .
35.
Pine, K. J. , & Messer, D. J. (2000). The effect of explaining another’s actions on children’s implicit theories of balance . Cognition and Instruction, 18, 35-52 .
36.
Pinker, S. (2002). The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature. New York: Viking .
37.
Robey, K. L. , Cohen, B. D. , & Epstein, Y. M. (1988). The child’s response to affection given to someone else: Effects of parental divorce, sex of child, and sibling position . Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 17, 2-7 .
38.
Snarey, J. (1993). How fathers care for the next generation: A four-decade study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .
39.
Solomon, G. E. A. (2002). Birth, kind, and naive biology . Developmental Science, 5, 213-218 .
