A Study On The Influencing Factors And Interventions Of Parents' Positive Delusion In Parent-child Relationship

Positive illusion refers to kinds of cognitive filtering and positive psychological adaptations made by individuals to themselves,their real life or future when they are in life or in face of stressful events.The positive illusion exists not only in self cognition,but also extends to close others.The existing research on positive illusion mainly focuses on the positive illusion of self and the positive illusion in marriage and love relationship,but the discussion on the positive illusion of parents in the parent-child relationship has hardly been involved.Children are the extension of parents’ consanguinity,and they are very important close people to their parents.Do parents have a positive illusion in the process of recognizing their children? What are the influencing factors of parents’ positive illusion in parent-child relationship? What is the role of parents’ positive illusion in parent-child relationship? If there any interventions can be taken to make parents’ perception of their children transform in a positive direction? Based on the above thinking,the researcher conducted a comprehensive exploration using measurement,experiment,interview and intervention methods through three studies.In study 1,explicit and implicit measurement methods were used to investigate the current situation of positive illusion of primary school students’ parents in the parent-child relationship.In study 1A,the trait word evaluation method was used to investigate the explicit positive illusion of 619 primary school students’ parents.The results showed that on the whole,the parents of primary school students had an explicit positive illusion about their children,and as for the parents’ positive illusion,there was no significant difference among children’s gender,parents’ gender and whether the child was the only child.On the basis of explicit measurement,in study1 B,the Go/No-go Association Task and recall paradigm were adopted to further explore the implicit nature of the positive illusion of parents in the parent-child relationship.The results found that the positive illusion of primary school students’ parents was implicit,and as for the implicit parents’ positive illusion,there was no significant difference between parental genders.The correlation analysis of explicit positive illusion and implicit positive illusion of primary school students’ parents found that there was only a low degree of positive correlation between implicit positive illusion and explicit positive illusion of primary school students’ parents,so they belonged to two different cognitive structures.Study 2 explored the influencing factors of parents’ positive illusion through the combination of qualitative research and quantitative research.In study 2A,the interview method was used to interview 16 parents who had positive illusions about their children and 16 parents who had negative illusions about their children in order to discuss the influencing factors of parents’ positive illusion from both positive and negative aspects.The results of qualitative research found that the positive and negative influencing factors of parents’ positive illusions both included parental factors,children’s factors and environmental factors.The positive influencing factors included parents’ positive psychological qualities,positive parenting styles,children’s extroverted and insensitive characteristics,positive psychological qualities and the positive influence of native families.The negative influencing factors included parents’ negative psychological qualities,negative parenting styles,children’s introverted,slow-tempered and sensitive characteristics,poor academic performance,and a highly competitive social environment,discordant marriage atmosphere and the negative influence of the original family.These three factors affected the parents’ positive illusion about their children through the parent-child relationship and parenting efficacy,and the parent’s positive illusion about the children would in turn affect the parent-child relationship and parenting efficacy.It was the effect of mutual influence.On the basis of interviews,in study 2B,the questionnaire method was adopted to further explore some specific influencing factors.The results of further quantitative research showed that parents’ optimism,self-esteem,hope and children’s academic performance could positively predict parents’ positive illusion,and parents’ negative perfectionism could negatively predict parents’ positive illusion.In study 3,the questionnaire method was used to explore the effect of the positive illusion of primary school students’ parents,and also the intervention method was used to intervene the parents with the negative illusion.In study 3A,the questionnaire method was adopted to compare the difference in related psychological indicators of parents and children between the positive illusion group and the negative illusion group,and to test the mediation effect of positive emotions in the influence of positive illusion of primary school students’ parents on subjective well-being.The results showed that patents’ parent-child relationship satisfaction,parenting satisfaction and children’s self-confidence,self-efficacy in positive illusion group were significantly higher than those in negative illusion group.The test of mediation effect found that parents’ positive illusion could affect their subjective well-being through their positive emotions.On the basis of discussing the role of positive illusion,in study 3B,the match training of related words about children plus positive trait words,the positive memory for constructing positive cognition,and the psychological guidance for positive parenting were adopted to give interventions to parents who had negative illusion about their children.The intervention strategies of positive parenting counseling was based on the research results of the negative influencing factors of positive illusion in study 2.The results of the intervention showed that after four months of intervention,parents’ negative illusion about their children was significantly reduced,parents’ parent-child relationship satisfaction,parenting satisfaction,and children’s self-confidence,self-efficacy were all significantly improved.Through the above research,the following conclusions can be drawn,(1)On the whole,primary school students’ parents have both explicit and implicit positive illusions about their children,but the explicit and implicit positive illusions belong to two different cognitive structure;(2)The influencing factors of the positive illusion of primary school students’ parents come from three aspects: parental factors,children’s factors and environmental factors;(3)The positive illusion of primary school students’ parents is helpful to improve parents’ parent-child relationship satisfaction,parenting satisfaction and subjective well-being as well as children’s self-confidence and self-efficacy;(4)Taking targeted intervention measures can effectively improve parents’ positive perception about their children.In summary,the three major studies in this paper have solved the problems of the current situation,the influencing factors,the role and the intervention of the positive illusion of primary school students’ parents.These studies expand the research group of parents’ positive illusion,provide the method reference for future research and further deepen the applied research of positive illusion.