Linking Parental Phubbing to Adolescent Self-Depreciation: The Roles of Internal Attribution and Relationship Satisfaction

Abstract

Phubbing is suggested to be a new form of social rejection, yet little is known about how people who are being “phubbed” interpret it within different relationships. Based on the social information processing model and the sociometer theory, this cross-sectional study investigated adolescents’ attribution for parental phubbing and its associations with adolescents’ relationship satisfaction and core self-evaluations. With a survey data from 300 Chinese adolescents, ages 12 to 16, a model linking parental phubbing to adolescents’ core self-evaluations was assessed, in which adolescents’ relationship satisfaction was a mediator and adolescents’ internal attribution for parental phubbing was a moderator. Parental phubbing was found to be associated with lower relationship satisfaction among adolescents who tended to internally attribute for it, which was predictive of their lower core self-evaluations.