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The Undergraduate Research Journal

Abstract

This research aimed at studying the influence of dominance in the parents’ relationship and the parent-child relationship on college students’ romantic relationships. Our hypothesis was that dominance in the parents’ relationship and authoritarian parenting will predict dominance in college students’ romantic relationships. Questionnaire data exploring this question were collected from 53 AUC students. Correlational and regression analyses were conducted and found that neither of our predictor variables; dominance in parents’ relationship and authoritarian parenting predicted the outcome variable; dominance in college students’ relationship. Also, no significant correlations were found between each of the predictor variables and the outcome variable. However, our two predictor variables were in fact significantly correlated. These results imply that students’ dominance levels are not affected by the dominance in their parent’s relationship or by their parenting styles, but that both dominance between parents and authoritarian parenting may arise out of a common factor. We suggest that this factor may be the presence of traditional patriarchal fathers.

Document Type

Research Article

Department

Psychology Department

Institutional Review Board (IRB) Approval

Not necessary for this item

COinS