The Relationship Between Parental Phubbing and Interpersonal Aggression in Adolescents: The Role of Rejection Sensitivity and School Climate

Abstract

The impact of parental phubbing has attracted the attention of researchers, especially concerning adolescents’ online behavior. However, limited research has studied the influence of parental phubbing on interpersonal aggression, including the underlying mechanism. Grounded in parental acceptance–rejection theory, the present study investigated the association between parental phubbing and interpersonal aggression as well as the mediating role of rejection sensitivity among adolescents. Additionally, school climate was explored as a moderator based on social ecological theory. The multiple questionnaires were completed by 914 Chinese adolescents (M = 12.61; SD = 1.73; 49.78% girls). The results revealed a positive correlation between parental phubbing and aggression, which was mediated by rejection sensitivity. That is, adolescents who experienced parental phubbing were more likely to exhibit rejection sensitivity, which further triggered aggression. Moreover, school climate acted as a moderator in the model. Specifically, we found no significant moderating effect of school climate on parental phubbing and aggression. However, school climate moderated the relationship between rejection sensitivity and aggression. A positive school climate buffered the associations of rejection sensitivity and aggression. Additionally, school climate moderated the relationship between parental phubbing and rejection sensitivity. The relationship between parental phubbing and rejection sensitivity became nonsignificant when adolescents were in a negative school climate, and those adolescents reported higher rejection sensitivity whether they experienced parental phubbing or not. Parental phubbing was more strongly associated with adolescents’ rejection sensitivity in a positive school climate. With a lower level of parental phubbing, rejection sensitivity is sharply reduced. The results deepen our understanding of the relationship between parental phubbing and aggression and its underlying mechanisms. It also implicates preventative interventions to reduce the risk of parental phubbing in interpersonal aggression among adolescents.

Keywords

parental phubbing interpersonal aggression rejection sensitivity school climate moderated mediation

Introduction

The number of Chinese smartphone users with Internet access reached 1.029 billion by December 2021 (China Internet Network Information Center, 2022). Smartphones are increasingly being used in daily life, even in parent–child interactions (Ante-Contreras, 2016). However, these technologies can sometimes disrupt or impair parent–child interactions (Mcdaniel & Coyne, 2016). The phenomenon that parents are distracted or ignore their children because of their smartphones when they are interacting with their children is defined as parental phubbing, which is a negative form of parent–child interaction and has attracted the interest of researchers (Wang, Gao, et al., 2020; Wang, Zhou, et al., 2022). As a new form of social exclusion (David & Roberts, 2017), parental phubbing negatively impacts adolescents’ psychological development, such as reducing the quality of parent–child communication, impairing adolescents’ interpersonal communication ability, and increasing the risk of accidental injury and problem behaviors (for a review, see Jiang et al., 2021).

Despite the growing body of research linking parental phubbing to adolescent problem behavior, these studies have mainly focused on online behavior, such as cyberbullying and Internet addiction (Geng et al., 2021; Wang & Lei, 2022; Wang, Wang, et al., 2022; Wang, Zhou, et al., 2022; Wei et al., 2021; Zhang, Ding, et al., 2021). Limited research has studied the relationship between parental phubbing and adolescent offline behaviors, particularly general aggression (Wang, Qiao, et al., 2022). Aggression is defined as the actions or internal mental state of someone who causes bodily or psychological harm to other people (Berkowitz, 1993; Dodge et al., 2006). It is accompanied by emotion or affection (e.g., anger), cognition (e.g., hostility), and behavior (e.g., physical and verbal aggression, Buss & Perry, 1992). Increases in social maladjustment issues among adolescents’ problem conduct are more closely correlated with aggression (Ostrov et al., 2019). Traditional aggression has more internalizing issues than cyberbullying for both the perpetrators and the victims (Sittichai & Smith, 2013). The current study aimed to provide guidelines for the prevention and intervention of adolescent mental health by extending the impact of parental phubbing on adolescent internet problem behaviors to general aggression.

Additionally, prior research on the mediating and moderating mechanism of the connection between parental phubbing and aggression has emphasized the viewpoint of parental factors (Wang, Qiao, et al., 2022). The mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying this relationship remain largely unknown. The present study investigated the potential mediating role of adolescent social cognition (i.e., rejection sensitivity) and the moderating role of social context (i.e., school climate), providing a more comprehensive understanding of the overall effect of parental phubbing on adolescent problem behaviors.

Literature Review

Parental Phubbing and Aggression

According to the parental acceptance–rejection theory, parental phubbing might be associated with adolescents’ problem behavior (Rohner & Lansford, 2017; Wang & Lei, 2022). This theory demonstrates how adolescents’ social cognition and behavior are influenced by parental acceptance and rejection (Rohner & Lansford, 2017). To be specific, adolescents’ emotional security and well-being are enhanced by warmth and acceptance, which transmit love, care, compassion, nurturing, and emotional support (Ripoll-Núñez & Carillo, 2016). Rejection and neglect, on the other hand, have negative effects like animosity, aggression, low self-esteem, emotional instability, and a negative worldview (Khaleque & Rohner, 2012). Adolescents who experience parental phubbing receive a message of estrangement or rejection, which makes them frustrated and aggressive (Berkowitz, 1989; Wang, Wang, et al., 2022). For instance, a prior study has found that parental phubbing could lead to more unfavorable and less favorable parenting styles, which would cause children to show social withdrawal and aggression (Wang, Qiao, et al., 2022).

Some studies also show support for this view. First, adolescents’ hostility and violence may increase as a result of interpersonal alienation (Wang, Wang, et al., 2023). The general aggression model (Anderson & Bushman, 2002) asserts that aggression is frequently brought on by frustration. Children subjected to parental emotional neglect devote themselves to deviant peer association, and this milieu results in problem behaviors externalizing, according to a study of left-behind children aged 11 to 17 (e.g., aggressive behavior; Yang et al., 2021). Second, emerging research has examined how parental phubbing affects children’s tendency to internalize issues. For instance, parental phubbing disrupts parent–adolescent communication, which promotes depression and loneliness among 10- to 20-year-old adolescents (Wang, Mao, et al., 2022; Wang, Zhao, et al., 2022). These internalized problems further raise the possibility of aggression (Yavuzer et al., 2019). Additionally, parental technoference in social interactions is linked to a rise in the aggressive conduct of children (Stockdale et al., 2018). In conclusion, we can anticipate a positive correlation between parental phubbing and aggression.

Rejection Sensitivity as a Mediator

Parental acceptance–rejection theory (Rohner & Lansford, 2017) states that people often model their perception, interpretation, and behavior (i.e., interpersonal relationships) after how their parents perceive them. Correspondingly, rejected children may imagine interpersonal relationships as unpredictable, unreliable, and harmful, and these negative mental representations further make them more hypersensitive (Zimmer-Gembeck et al., 2014). This process is called rejection sensitivity (Downey & Feldman, 1996). Those who have been rejected respond aggressively and defensively to rejection (Rohner & Lansford, 2017). Rejection sensitivity refers to the anxious and angry expectations of rejection and the tendency to readily perceive and overreact to it (Downey & Feldman, 1996). It is also a social cognitive processing style that emerges from encounters with other people’s acceptance or rejection (Downey et al., 1998). According to the parental acceptance–rejection theory (Rohner & Lansford, 2017), rejection sensitivity could be a mediator explaining the relation between parental phubbing and aggression. Children exposed to covert rejection in their family (e.g., parental phubbing) may be less likely to expect interpersonal closeness, dependency, and trust, which is internalized as rejection sensitivity (Feldman & Downey, 1994). This in turn leads to increased distress and more violent behavior (Downey et al., 1998; Wang, Gao, et al., 2020). Additionally, the longitudinal and cross-sectional studies have also suggested that rejection sensitivity plays a mediating role in the relationship between parenting style and internalizing and externalizing problems (Rowe et al., 2015; Rudolph & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2014; Wang & Qiao, 2022; Zhou et al., 2020). These studies give consistent empirical data to support the mediation role of rejection sensitivity.

Despite scarce direct empirical evidence, it is logical to predict that rejection sensitivity is a mediator in the relationship between parental phubbing and aggression. On the one hand, we can expect a positive correlation between parental phubbing and rejection sensitivity. Negative parental attitudes can elicit adolescents’ rejection sensitivity, according to the parental acceptance–rejection theory (Rohner & Lansford, 2017). The experience of parental rejection as a youngster predicts their rejection sensitivity as adults (Ibrahim et al., 2015). Furthermore, a longitudinal study demonstrates that early negative family experiences of adolescents predict a rise in their rejection sensitivity (Araiza et al., 2020). Those who perceived higher levels of negative attitudes from their parents have greater increases in rejection sensitivity over 1 year (Webb et al., 2017).

On the other hand, the positive correlation between rejection sensitivity and aggression is well established in early works (Downey et al., 1998; Romero-Canyas et al., 2010). Aggression is a common defensive response among people who are sensitive to rejection (Casini et al., 2021). They have a rejection-primed cognitive-affective processing system that, when engaged, could result in relationship-destroying behavior (i.e., aggression, Downey et al., 1998; Thomas & Bowker, 2015). Similarly, heightened rejection sensitivity in adolescents predicts future aggression (Beeson et al., 2020). They may encounter more interpersonal challenges and, as a result, act aggressively (Gao et al., 2021). In conclusion, parental phubbing would be positively related to rejection sensitivity, which in turn could be positively related to aggression.

School Climate as a Moderator

School climate (da Cunha et al., 2021) is a critical social context for adolescents. It is defined as “the quality and character” of a school, which is a comprehensive reflection of culture, norms, interpersonal relationships, teaching, and organizational structure (Cohen et al., 2009). Researchers have concentrated on three aspects of school climate: teacher support, student–student support, and opportunities for autonomy (Jia et al., 2009). Social ecological theory (Hong & Espelage, 2012) describes how multiple social contexts influence aggression and assumes that individual characteristics and social environments, as well as their interaction, influence adolescents’ aggression. A pleasant school climate encourages adolescents to interact with others (Yang et al., 2019). Therefore, school climate may be a moderator in the relationships between parental phubbing, rejection sensitivity, and aggression.

According to social ecological theory (Hong & Espelage, 2012), the interaction between school climate and family factor (i.e., parental phubbing) has been observed as the important ecological context for adolescents’ aggression. Several studies have provided indirect support for this view. First, studies have found that student–student support (e.g., peer communication) moderates the relationship between parental phubbing and problem behavior in adolescents. Positive peer contact could compensate for short-form video addiction caused by parental phubbing (Wang & Lei, 2022). Additionally, school climate acts as a moderator in the relationship between unfavorable settings and problem behavior. Previous studies have found that school climate moderates the relationship between community violence exposure and delinquency, and this association is weakened when students perceived a more favorable school climate (Gaias et al., 2019). Also, a pleasant school climate buffers the relationship between peer victimization and suicidal thoughts and behavior (Wang et al., 2018).

Grounded in social ecological theory (Hong & Espelage, 2012), school climate may also moderate the indirect relationship between parental phubbing and aggression via rejection sensitivity. On the one hand, school climate might moderate the relation between parental phubbing and rejection sensitivity. First, a high-quality school climate may provide more social support chances for teachers and classmates. And social support mitigates the link between parental phubbing and internalizing problems (Wang, Gao, et al., 2020). Second, school climate may improve the negative cognition of parental phubbing. Previous evidence suggests that a positive school climate could alleviate the negative consequences of everyday obstacles, thus boosting subjective well-being (Hatzichristou et al., 2020). Furthermore, the association between unpleasant events and internalizing problems is moderated by school climate. A prior study found that a positive school climate prevented adolescents aged 6 to18 from having mental health problems in high community violence (Starkey et al., 2019). Therefore, we expect that school climate may moderate the relationship between parental phubbing and rejection sensitivity. Specifically, a positive school climate may buffer the associations of parental phubbing with rejection sensitivity.

On the other hand, according to social ecological theory (Hong & Espelage, 2012), individual factors (e.g., rejection sensitivity) and school climate can jointly influence aggression (Hong & Espelage, 2012). A positive school climate serves as a stress reducer in biological vulnerabilities (Wang et al., 2017). Adolescents with high rejection sensitivity are always apprehensive or concerned about others’ reactions in interpersonal situations (Downey & Feldman, 1996). However, a healthy school climate could alleviate fears of being bullied and relieve stress, lessening the chance of aggression (Zhang, Mulhall, et al., 2021). Additionally, the interaction of rejection sensitivity and school engagement affects problem behavior. Specifically, internet addiction among adolescents with high rejection sensitivity decreased with increased school engagement (Li et al., 2021). Similarly, a prior study has also found that the quality of friendship mitigates the detrimental effect of rejection sensitivity on mental well-being (Efeoglu & Sen, 2022). Based on theoretical and empirical evidence, it might be logical to predict that school climate can mitigate the association between rejection sensitivity and aggression.

The Current Study

Previous studies have emphasized the adverse effects of parental phubbing on adolescents’ online deviant behaviors (Wang, Qiao, et al., 2022); however, the effect of offline aggression and the underlying mechanisms remain unknown and require further investigation. Based on the parental acceptance–rejection theory, the present study sought to investigate the association between parental phubbing and aggression as well as the mediating role of rejection sensitivity among Chinese adolescents (Rohner & Lansford, 2017). Additionally, given evidence for social ecological theory (Hong & Espelage, 2012), it would also be intriguing to investigate the moderating role of school climate on the direct and indirect associations of parental phubbing and aggression.

Overall, we established a moderated mediating model (Figure 1): (a) parental phubbing might be positively correlated with aggression, (b) rejection sensitivity might mediate this relationship, and (c) school climate might moderate the direct and indirect associations between parental phubbing and aggression via rejection sensitivity.

Figure 1.

The assumptive mediated moderation model.

Method

Participants

A total of 921 students were collected by random cluster sampling from three primary schools and two middle schools in Jiangsu Province, China. Due to substantial amounts of missing data and straight-line responses, seven participants were excluded before the data analysis, with an effective recovery rate of 99.24%. The final analytical sample included 914 students (455 girls and 459 boys) ranging in age from 10 to 17 years (M = 12.61, SD = 1.73). All students completed the test in their classroom under the guidance of teachers and experimenters. Before the survey, the experimenters provided informed consent for the students and their teachers, as well as their parents, including the anonymous and strictly confidential data. They also went over the regulations of voluntary participation and the ability to withdraw at any time. All students volunteered for the study and completed the survey anonymously. The present research was approved by the ethics committee at Beijing Normal University.

Measures

Parental phubbing

Parental phubbing was measured by the Chinese revision of the Parent’s Phubbing Scale (Ding et al., 2020). The scale has nine items with a 5-point score (1 = “Never,” 5 = “All the Time”; e.g., “My parents glance at their cell phone when talking to me”). Higher scores indicated higher parental phubbing. In previous investigations, the questionnaire achieved high-reliability coefficients among Chinese adolescents (ranging from .82 to .88, Ding et al., 2020; Wang & Qiao, 2022). In the present study, Cronbach’s α was .85, indicating that it was a reliable instrument for assessing parental phubbing in Chinese adolescents.

Aggression

Aggression was measured by the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (Buss & Perry, 1992), which was revised by Liu et al. (2009) in the Chinese context. It has 20 items with a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (completely disagree) to 5 (completely agree) (e.g., “If somebody hits me, I hit them back”). Higher scores indicated higher involvement in aggression. In a prior study on aggression among Chinese adolescents, the reliability coefficient of this questionnaire was .90 (Yu et al., 2021). Cronbach’s α was .92 in the present study.

Rejection sensitivity

The Children’s Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire (CRSQ) was developed by Downey et al. (1998) and adapted by Ding et al. (2018) for Chinese adolescents. The scale covers six scenarios, and the following is an example: “Pretend a prominent visitor is coming to your school. The teacher selects five students to meet the celebrity guest. You’re wondering if she will pick you to meet the famous guest.” For a total of 18 items, each situation contains 3 items indicating the degree of anxiety expectations (e.g., “How NERVOUS would you feel about whether or not the teacher will choose you to meet the famous guest”), angry expectations (e.g., “How MAD would you feel about whether or not the teacher will choose you to meet the famous guest”), and feeling disliked (e.g., “Do you think the teacher is going to choose you to meet the famous guest”). The items were rated according to a six-point Likert-type scale (anxiety expectations: 1 = “not nervous,” 6 = “very, very nervous”; angry expectations: 1 = “not mad,” 6 = “very, very mad”; feeling disliked: 1 = “YES!!!,” 6 = “NO!!!”). The anxiety expectation, anger expectation, and feeling disliked components were averaged across the six instances. Higher scores indicated greater rejection sensitivity. CRSQ has shown strong reliability in Chinese adolescents in a previous study (α = .83, Ding et al., 2021). In the present study, Cronbach’s α was .82.

School climate

School Climate Scale revised by Jia (2009). A total of 25 items were scored using a 4-point Likert-type scale (1 = “never,” 4 = “always”; e.g., “students care about one another”). Higher scores indicated a more positive school climate. The scale has shown strong reliability in Chinese adolescents (α = .91; Yang et al., 2019). In the present study, Cronbach’s α was .90.

Statistical Analyses

All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS Version 25.0 and Mplus 7.0. First, Harman’s one-factor test was used to identify common method variance. Following principal component analysis, 13 factors produced a characteristic root value that was greater than 1, and only 19.90% of the variance could be explained by the first factor, less than the critical standard of 40% (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Therefore, no obvious common method variance was found in this study. Second, descriptive statistics and Pearson’s correlation analysis were used to examine all research variables. Third, we computed the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for each outcome (i.e., rejection sensitivity and aggression) using Mplus (Muthen & Satorra, 1995). Based on the estimated models, the ICCs were <.05 (rejection sensitivity: ICC = .009; aggression: ICC = .048), indicating significant independence in the outcomes observed among students clustered in the same school and thus not needing the use of multilevel modeling (Muthen & Satorra, 1995). Fourth, PROCESS macro v4.0 Model 4 (Hayes, 2017) was used to evaluate the total effect of parental phubbing on aggression and the mediating effects of rejection sensitivity. Finally, Model 59 of PROCESS was used to examine the proposed moderated mediation model.

Results

Descriptive Statistics and Correlation Analysis

The means, standard deviations, and correlation matrix for all variables were presented in Table 1. Age was significantly positively associated with parental phubbing and aggression. An independent sample t-test was used to test the gender differences for each variable. The results showed that females scored higher on rejection sensitivity (t = 3.85, p < .001) than males, and there were no gender differences for parental phubbing (t = 1.75, p = .08), aggression (t = −1.23, p = .22), and school climate (t = −.48, p = .63). Therefore, we included gender and age as covariates in subsequent analyses, where gender was a dummy variable coded as 0 = male and 1 = female.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics and Correlations Among the Study Variables.

Variables	M	SD	1	2	3	4	5
1 Age	12.61	1.73	1
2 PP	21.30	7.27	.25^***	1
3 RS	8.55	2.59	−.03	.29^***	1
4 Aggression	44.43	16.87	.19^***	.37^***	.39^***	1
5 SC	75.71	12.59	−.05	−.37^***	−.42^***	−.52^***	1

Note. N = 914. PP = parental phubbing; RS = rejection sensitivity; SC = school climate.

***

p < .001.

Mediation Model Test

The mediation analysis showed that all pathways were significant (ps < .05), even after controlling for gender and age (see Table 2). The total effect of parental phubbing on aggression was positively significant (total effect = .35, SE = .03, t = 11.04, p < .001, 95% confidence interval [CI] [.29, .41]). Rejection sensitivity meditated the relationship between parental phubbing and aggression (indirect effect = .10, 95% CI [.08, .13]). By controlling the mediators, the direct effect of parental phubbing on aggression was still significant (direct effect = .25, SE = .03, t = 7.86, p < .001, 95% CI [.18, .31]), indicating partial mediation by rejection sensitivity of the link between parental phubbing and aggression.

Table 2.

Testing the Pathways of the Mediation Model.

Predictors	Model 1 (RS)		Model 2 (Aggression)
Predictors	β	t	β	t
Gender	−.21	−3.35^***	.19	3.20^**
Age	−.06	−3.10^**	.07	4.30^***
PP	.31	9.58^***	.25	7.86^***
RS			.34	11.02^***
R ²	.11		.25
F	36.16^***		75.55^***

Note. N = 914. PP = parental phubbing; RS = rejection sensitivity.

p < .01. ***p < .001.

Moderated Mediation Model Test

The PROCESS (Model 59, Hayes, 2017) was used to evaluate the hypothesis model. The moderated mediation analysis showed that school climate moderated the indirect relationship between parental phubbing and aggression (see Table 3). School climate positively moderated the effect of parental phubbing on rejection sensitivity (β = .13, SE = .03, t = 4.70, p < .001, 95% CI [.07, .18]). To elaborate upon the moderating effect of school climate, simple slope analysis was used to examine the interaction for low, middle, and high levels of school climate (see Figure 2A, the low/medium/high level school climate). At a low level of school climate, parental phubbing had a nonsignificant predictive effect on rejection sensitivity (simple slope = .04, SE = .04, t = .95, p = .34, 95% CI [−.04, .12]); at a medium level of school climate, the prediction of parental phubbing on rejection sensitivity was significant (simple slope = .17, SE = .03, t = 5.13, p < .001, 95% CI [.10, .23]); and the prediction was higher at a high level of school climate (simple slope = .29, SE = .04, t = 7.07, p < .001, 95% CI [.21, .37]).

Table 3.

Testing the Moderated Mediation Effect Model.

Predictors	Model 1 (RS)		Model 2 (Aggression)
Predictors	β	t	β	t
Gender	−.22	−3.71^***	.15	2.76^**
Age	−.05	−2.74^**	.08	4.83^***
PP	.17	5.13^***	.16	5.09^***
SC	−.35	−11.03^***	−.38	−12.36^***
PP × SC	.13	4.70^***	.03	0.93
RS			.20	6.50^***
RS × SC			−.08	−2.75^**
R ²	.24		.36
F	56.64^***		72.58^***

Note. N = 914. PP = parental phubbing; RS = rejection sensitivity; SC = school climate.

p < .01. ***p < .001.

Figure 2.

Simple slope analysis of the moderating effect of school climate on the relationship (a) between parental phubbing and rejection sensitivity and (b) between rejection sensitivity and aggression.

The results showed that school climate had a nonsignificant moderating effect of parental phubbing on aggression (β = .03, SE = .03, t = .93, p = .35, 95% CI [−.03, .08]). However, school climate negatively moderated the effect of rejection sensitivity on aggression. More specifically, school climate weakened the positive prediction of rejection sensitivity for aggression (see Figure 2B, low level of school climate: simple slope = .28, SE = .04, t = 6.96, p < .001, 95% CI [.20, .36]; medium level of school climate: simple slope = .20, SE = .03, t = 6.50, p < .001, 95% CI [.14, .26]; high level of school climate: simple slope = .12, SE = .04, t = 2.73, p = .006, 95% CI [.03, .21]). The indirect effect at different levels of school climate showed that when in the low level of school climate, the indirect effect was .011 (95% CI [−.01, .04]); when in the medium level of school climate, the indirect effect was .033 (95% CI [.02, .05]); and when in the high level of school climate, the indirect effect was .035 (95% CI [.01, .06]).

The current study sought to investigate the association between parental phubbing and general aggression, as well as its moderating and mediating mechanisms, and hence concentrated on assessing and testing adolescents’ overall aggression. The results of the relationships between variables with aggressiveness forms (i.e., physical aggression, anger, hostility, and substitution aggression) and gender differences can be found in Appendix A.

Discussion

The present study discovered that parental phubbing was positively associated with aggression. This finding is consistent with parental acceptance–rejection theory (Rohner & Lansford, 2017) and previous evidence (Wang, Qiao, et al., 2022). Specifically, adolescents who experienced more parental phubbing were more likely to feel rejected and dissatisfied, which encourages their aggression to defend themselves against further rejection. Previous research also found that parents who are preoccupied with their smartphones may ignore their children’s interactional initiatives and emotional needs (Elias et al., 2021). Once children fail to articulate their emotions (especially negative emotions), they may vent their frustrations by attacking others. Another possibility is that adolescents living in chronic neglect families have difficulty coping with social problems (e.g., poor social skills or weak social ties), and they may be at a higher risk of aggression or delinquency (Logan-Greene & Jones, 2015). Furthermore, parental phubbing causes an insecure parent–child attachment, which reduces self-control and eventually leads to aggression (Sun et al., 2022).

Considering the unclear mechanisms of how and when parental phubbing promotes adolescents’ aggression, the results explored the mediating roles of rejection sensitivity and the moderating roles of school climate. These findings are discussed in the following sections.

The Mediating Role of Rejection Sensitivity

As expected, rejection sensitivity acts as a mediator in the relationship between parental phubbing and aggression. Specifically, parental phubbing was positively associated with rejection sensitivity; rejection sensitivity, in turn, was positively associated with aggression. This result is consistent with existing research showing that rejection sensitivity mediates the association between negative parenting and adverse reactions (Rudolph & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2014). It also supported the parental acceptance–rejection theory (Rohner & Lansford, 2017). Specifically, adolescents who are subjected to parental phubbing feel impaired self-esteem and impaired self-adequacy by rejection, and this experience leads them to interpret inadvertent slights and minor acts of insensitivity as deliberate acts of rejection or other hurtful intentions, a condition known as rejection sensitivity. Thus, they will resort to aggression to protect themselves from harm. Furthermore, as a negative parenting interaction, parental phubbing may trigger negative self-evaluations in adolescents (Liu et al., 2021), causing them to lose confidence in interpersonal communication and become sensitive to rejection. Rejection sensitivity, in turn, leads to an exaggerated perception of neutral interpersonal cues as rejection, which might incite aggression (Downey & Feldman, 1996; Downey et al., 1998).

The single path merits further explanation. On the one hand, parental phubbing was positively correlated with rejection sensitivity. First, parental neglect reduces support for children’s psychosocial resources (Lim & Lee, 2017). Thus, youngsters struggle to cope with the threat of rejection (Li et al., 2019). Second, phubbers cause communication disruptions (Guazzini et al., 2021), which may increase children’s anxious expectations of rejection when communicating with them. Furthermore, adolescents’ perceived parental rejection is increased and warmth is decreased when adolescents suffer from parental phubbing, and this perception diminishes their relatedness and needs satisfaction (Xie & Xie, 2020). They might hold a pessimistic belief about interpersonal relationships (Terada & Kawamoto, 2017), making them more sensitive to rejection from others.

On the other hand, rejection sensitivity was positively correlated with aggression. Unlike low rejection sensitivity, adolescents with high rejection sensitivity develop more hostility toward others and react with aggression (Romero-Canyas et al., 2010). They also have difficulty with cognitive emotion regulation (e.g., perspective-taking and positive reappraisal), which makes them resort to aggressive behavior to solve interpersonal problems (Casini et al., 2021). Additionally, adolescents with high rejection sensitivity are more jealous than those with low rejection sensitivity, which may subsequently invoke aggression (Murphy & Russell, 2018).

The Moderating Role of School Climate

The present study did not find a significant moderating effect of school climate on the direct relationship between parental phubbing and aggression. One explanation is that family factors may have a greater impact on adolescent aggression than school factors. Adolescents who are subjected to prolonged parental phubbing may also lack parental discipline, resulting in the development of bad behavioral habits such as aggression, which may be difficult to overcome even in a supportive school setting. Additionally, students in a favorable school climate may prefer to repress negative emotions to preserve their positive image, making it difficult for them to release negative emotions after experiencing parental phubbing, resulting in aggression. Even so, some research shows that the interaction of the parent–child relationship and school climate has a nonsignificant effect on problem behavior among adolescents (e.g., Zhu et al., 2015). This result might be explained by the complex relationship between parental phubbing and aggression; thus, the moderating effect of school climate might be realized via the mediating mechanism. Accordingly, our results also supported the hypothesis that school climate can help to moderate the link between parental phubbing and aggression via rejection sensitivity. This discovery will be discussed in greater depth in the following section.

As described in the results, a positive school climate weakened the positive relationship between rejection sensitivity and aggression. From the perspective of emotional maladjustment, harmonious friendships at school could offset loneliness and depression in the context of high rejection sensitivity (Zimmer-Gembeck et al., 2014), thereby inhibiting aggression. From the perspective of cognition, a positive school climate (such as support from teachers and classmates) may correct high rejection sensitivity adolescents’ negative perception of being rejected, accordingly improving their social confidence and reducing interpersonal aggression. Additionally, a prior study revealed that a positive school climate could complement adolescents’ cognitive resources and increase their self-control, an outcome that weakens their aggression (Xu et al., 2014).

The present study also found that school climate moderated the link between parental phubbing and rejection sensitivity. Contrary to our expectations, the results showed that adolescents who perceived a negative school climate were more sensitive to rejection, regardless of whether they experienced parental phubbing. A previous study found that compared with parent rejection, peer rejection has a stronger association with rejection sensitivity (Mclachlan et al., 2010). Thus, adolescents in a negative school climate exhibited high rejection sensitivity. However, there is a limit to the increase in rejection sensitivity; parental phubbing has a very weak effect on rejection sensitivity. In contrast, in a positive school climate, adolescents who experienced parental phubbing were more susceptible to developing rejection sensitivity. Some research has found that a positive school climate buffers the relationship between negative interpersonal relations and internalizing symptoms (Holfeld & Baitz, 2020). One possibility is that adolescents in a positive school climate are more concerned with their interpersonal interactions. Once neglected by parents, they may blame themselves for being rejected. The results also found that adolescents in a positive school climate exhibited less rejection sensitivity when they experienced less parental phubbing. Positive parent–child interaction promotes the development of social functioning in adolescents (Dykas & Cassidy, 2011), and these social traits assist them in obtaining emotional and academic support as well as opportunities for autonomy in school, thereby decreasing their rejection sensitivity (Jia et al., 2009).

Implications

Parental phubbing is a new phenomenon in parent–child communication that has emerged with the development of science and technology, and previous studies have focused on the influence of parental phubbing and adolescents’ online behaviors (Wang & Lei, 2022; Wei et al., 2021). The present study extends the relationship of parental phubbing to adolescents’ offline aggression, enriching research on parental phubbing and interpersonal aggression in adolescents. Second, this study is the first to confirm the relationship between parental phubbing and rejection sensitivity, indicating that parental phubbing would even harm their children’s self-cognition. Meanwhile, as a cognitive process, rejection sensitivity can help us to better understand how parental factors (such as parental phubbing) lead to aggression. In other words, adolescents’ rejection sensitivity bridges the gap between parental phubbing and their aggressive behavior. Third, our work reveals the mechanism of aggression from multiple perspectives of the interactions of school and family and school and adolescents’ cognition. Finally, we attempt to integrate the theoretical application of parental acceptance-rejection theory and social ecological theory to study the association between parental phubbing and interpersonal aggression, bolster the role of cognition and the school environment, and provide an empirical framework for testing the mediating role of rejection sensitivity and the moderating role of school climate.

This work also provides practical value. First, the protective effect of school climate is effective. The Happy Classrooms Programme has been used to improve the school climate to decrease behavioral problems and emotional distress (Lombas et al., 2019). Second, parents should raise awareness of the adverse impact of parental phubbing on adolescents, such as reducing the frequency of smartphone use or explaining the reasons for its use before using smartphones when communicating with children. Third, it is important to prevent adolescents from developing rejection sensitivity. The primary focus of intervention could include building resilience, reducing negative internal attribution, and improving emotional regulation strategies. Notably, from the different moderating patterns of school climate, we should also take the development of rejection sensitivity in a positive school climate seriously, especially if the harm of parental phubbing is greater.

Limitations and Prospects

This study has some limitations that merit addressing in further research. First, we used a cross-sectional design, which only reveals the correlation among variables. In future, a longitudinal study could be used to reveal the trajectory of the underlying mechanisms. Second, all variables were obtained by self-reporting, hence causality cannot be confirmed completely. Future studies can manipulate parental phubbing and rejection sensitivity through experimental research or intervene in the school climate to monitor changes in these relationships. Third, the subjects included only Chinese adolescents, limiting the generalizability of the results. Some researchers suggest that culture can influence interpersonal sensitivity (Liu & Gu, 2015). Individuals in collectivist cultures pay more attention to interpersonal relations and may be more sensitive to social cues than individualistic cultures (Hu et al., 2020). Future studies should investigate different cultural groups and explore if our findings apply to Western culture. Fourth, the present study looked at parental phubbing as a whole. However, parents sometimes play different roles in adolescents’ mental health and behavior. Mother–child attachment affects children’s mental health, and father–child attachment affects their behavior (Zhao et al., 2020). Future studies can simultaneously investigate the differences between fathers’ phubbing and mothers’ phubbing on adolescents’ rejection sensitivity and aggression. Fifth, previous research has discovered distinctions between the forms (relational vs. overt) and functions (proactive vs. reactive) of aggression (Evans et al., 2019). Future research can look into the relationships between those variables and these subtypes.

Furthermore, the present study investigated the relationship between parental phubbing and interpersonal aggression using cognition as a mediating mechanism and school context as a moderating mechanism. However, the effects of other individual variables were not taken into account. Some studies discovered that other mediating or moderating mechanisms, such as children’s psychological reactance, self-awareness (e.g., self-control), psychological needs (e.g., security), and values (e.g., materialism), influence the relationship between parenting variables and negative social behavior (Geng et al., 2022; Xu et al., 2021; Zhao et al., 2020). Prospective studies should include other potential moderating and mediating variables to make the results more comprehensive and stable.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-jiv-10.1177_08862605221145722 – Supplemental material for The Relationship Between Parental Phubbing and Interpersonal Aggression in Adolescents: The Role of Rejection Sensitivity and School Climate

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-jiv-10.1177_08862605221145722 for The Relationship Between Parental Phubbing and Interpersonal Aggression in Adolescents: The Role of Rejection Sensitivity and School Climate by Jinzhe Zhao, Zhen Guo, Huiyue Shi, Mengke Yu, Liying Jiao and Yan Xu in Journal of Interpersonal Violence

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge all the participants, and our cooperators for assistance in the study.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interests with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article: This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31671160), the fellowship of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2022M710431), and the Major Project of National Social Science Foundation (19ZDA363).

ORCID iDs

Jinzhe Zhao

Yan Xu

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Author Biographies

Jinzhe Zhao is a PhD candidate of Social Psychology in the Faculty of Psychology at Beijing Normal University. Her research experiences have focused on personality and social psychology, moral psychology, cyber psychology, and aggression.

Zhen Guo is a PhD candidate of Social Psychology in the Faculty of Psychology at Beijing Normal University. His research experiences have focused on adolescents’ moral development.

Huiyue Shi is a PhD candidate of Social Psychology in the Faculty of Psychology at Beijing Normal University. Her research experiences have focused on moral psychology.

Mengke Yu is a graduate student of the Faculty of Psychology at Beijing Normal University. Her research interests mainly focus on moral psychology, cyber psychology, body image, and work stress.

Liying Jiao, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow at Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University. Her research focuses on the structure of good personality and evil personality, culture, moral/immoral deeds, and moral judgment.

Yan Xu, PhD, is a professor of Social Psychology in the Faculty of Psychology at Beijing Normal University. Her research focuses on personality and social psychology, good and evil personality and moral psychology, and healthy personality of children and adolescents and its education.

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