Parental Psychological Control and Adolescent Academic Achievement: The Mediating Role of Achievement Goal Orientation

This study examined the multiple mediating roles of achievement goal orientation between three parental psychological control (PPC) strategies and adolescents’ academic achievement. The study sample consisted of 2613 Chinese middle school adolescents (52.6% boys) who were followed for one and a half years; they completed questionnaires on PPC (including love withdrawal, guilt induction, and authority assertion), achievement goal orientation (involving the mastery approach, the performance approach, and performance-avoidance goals), and academic achievement. We found that (1) the direct effects of the three strategies on academic performance differed, with love withdrawal directly and negatively predicting adolescents’ academic achievement and guilt induction and authority assertion not being significant direct predictors. (2) The mediating role of achievement goal orientations differed across the psychological control strategies. Specifically, love withdrawal led to adolescents’ academic achievement through their performance-approach goal orientation, performance-avoidance goal orientation, and mastery goal orientation. Moreover, guilt induction and authority assertion had impacts only on adolescents’ performance-approach and performance-avoidance goal orientations. This study highlights the negative impact of love withdrawal on adolescents’ internal motivation and academic achievement by warning parents not to use this strategy to influence their children’s thoughts and feelings.