Phd in PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL NEUROSCIENCE

Thesis title: From Real-World to Online Risky Behaviours: The Role of Self-Efficacy Beliefs and Family Context

The overall aim of the present thesis was to examine how environmental (e.g., positive parental context) and individual factors (e.g., parenting and filial self-efficacy beliefs) operate in concert within an integrative causal structure in governing risky behaviors during child developmental transitions. Risky behaviors encompassed varied real-world rule-breaking behaviors, including stealing, use of illegal substances, or vandalism, and online risky behaviors, including sexting. Specifically, the first aim of the present dissertation was to explore the developmental trends of parenting self-efficacy (PSE) among mothers and fathers over seven waves (approximately from 9 to 18 years old, a period covering children's transition from late childhood to late adolescence) and to examine whether and how initial levels and rate of changes of mothers' and fathers' PSE were salient with respect to predicting late adolescents’ rule-breaking (RB) behaviors outcome. The second aim was to gain an accurate insight into the nature of these relations by investigating the potential bidirectional longitudinal associations between PSE and adolescents’ RB behaviors and by disentangling maternal from paternal influences and within-person from between-person effects. Finally, the third aim was to investigate the longitudinal mediating effect of filial self-efficacy in the relationship between an early positive parental context and engagement in sexting behaviors during the transition to emerging adulthood (approximately from 13 to 19 years old).