Adolescents' and Mothers' Evaluations of Justifications for Disputes

This study exatnined 7th-, 9th-, and 11 th-grade adolescents'(n = 255) and theirmothers' evaluations of justifications for hypothetical conflicts. Subjects evaluated different parental and adolescent justifications, classified according to social-cognitive domain, fortheirefficacy, adequacy, likelihood of use, andpotentialforcausingconflict. Parental appeals to authority and punishment were rated more effective in obtaining compliance by all subjects, but they were seen as less adequate and as causing more conflict than other parental justifications, especially as adolescents got older Furthermore, mothers evaluated parental conventional justifications more positively on study dimensions than did adolescents, whereas adolescents evaluated appeals to personal jurisdiction more positivety on the dimensions examined here than did their mothers. The findings are discussed in terms of previous research on adolescent-parent conflict and children's conceptions of disciplinary strategies.