Child's personality and perception of parental relationship as correlates of optimal experience

Abstract

The study was designed to assess the influence of child´s personality and perception of parental relationship on children´s optimal experiences. We proposed functional and dysfunctional models to analyze the increase or the decrease of the children´s flow experience. The sample of this study included 909 middle class children, aged 9 to 12 (M= 11.02, SD= 1.08), both sexes, from Argentina. When we analysed the psychological factors that could be related to the flow state in childhood, we found out that the child´s perception of a functional parental relationship, in which there is either acceptance or moderate control, indirectly affects the flow experience, through child´s personality - extraversion, openness to experience, and conscientiousness-. Functional personality traits have an important positive effect on optimal experience when they are considered as a unit. In the dysfunctional model of flow, the results showed that the child´s perception of parental pathological control had an important positive effect on neuroticism and -through this - a negative effect on flow. The child´s perception of parental negligence did not have a significant effect on neuroticism; however, neuroticism still maintained its negative effect on flow.