Children's attitudes toward rational versus inhibitory parental authority.

Abstract

"Starting with Fromm's (1941) distinction between rational and inhibitory authority, the study investigates children's attitudes towards their parents' restrictive norms and checking actions . . ‥ The results indicate that if parents' restrictive norms and checking actions are accompanied by authoritarian motivations (inhibiting authority), the children's positive attitudes towards these are negatively correlated with chronological age, verbal intelligence . . . and preference for altruistic alternatives to authoritarian ones . . ‥ If the . . . actions are accompanied by rational motivations (indicating rational parental authority), the attitudes have a tendency to correlate positively with these three independent variables." From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4FG15P. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)