Cross-Cultural Research

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Introduction: Parental Acceptance-Rejection Theory Studies of

Intimate Adult Relationships
Ronald P. Rohner
Cross-Cultural Research 2008 42: 5
DOI: 10.1177/1069397107309749

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 Cross-Cultural Research
Introduction Volume 42 Number 1
February 2008 5-12
© 2008 Sage Publications
Parental Acceptance- 10.1177/1069397107309749
http://ccr.sagepub.com
Rejection Theory Studies of hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com

Intimate Adult Relationships

Ronald P. Rohner
University of Connecticut

The studies in this special issue explore three questions drawn from newly
formulated postulates in parental acceptance-rejection theory: (a) To what
extent is perceived acceptance or rejection by an intimate partner in adulthood
associated with the same form of psychological adjustment or maladjustment
that perceived parental acceptance-rejection is known to be in childhood?
(b) To what extent do remembrances of maternal or paternal acceptance in
childhood mediate or influence in other ways the association between
perceived partner acceptance and adults’ psychological adjustment? (c) Do
statistical relations found in these questions vary by culture, ethnicity, gender
of parent, gender of offspring, or other contextual factors? Results of most
studies reported here conclude that perceived partner acceptance and remem-
bered parental (both maternal and paternal) acceptance in childhood correlate
significantly with men’s and women’s psychological adjustment. However,
gender differences also sometimes appears as significant and independent
contributors to the psychological adjustment of men versus that of women.

Keywords: parental acceptance-rejection theory; PARTheory; intimate adult

relationships

T he stimulus for this special issue (Rohner & Melendez, 2008) goes back
to 1999 when I sat across a table from a colleague in my office. She was
distraught over a failed relationship that had ended 3 years earlier. As she
talked and cried, she expressed her anger, impaired self-esteem, emotional
volatility (emotional instability), and other negative thoughts and emotions
known to be associated with the perception of parental rejection in childhood.
At first I was puzzled why she was displaying the cluster of symptoms
postulated in parental acceptance-rejection theory’s (PARTheory’s) person-
ality subtheory to be caused by the experience of parental rejection. I was
especially intrigued because I had reason to believe that she had been raised
in a loving family. But as she continued talking I had a flash of insight—an

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6 Cross-Cultural Research

epiphany. I hypothesized, of course it is not just parental rejection in childhood

that produces these effects; it is rejection by an attachment figure at any
point in the life span that can have these effects. Her experience of abrupt,
unwanted, and unanticipated rejection by the man she adored and on whom
her sense of emotional security, happiness, and well-being had become so
dependent produced, so I hypothesized, this cascade of negative emotions,
thoughts, and behaviors.
This event was the major impetus for a paradigm shift in PARTheory.
That is, initially PARTheory postulated that perceived parental rejection is
likely to be associated with the specific cluster of personality dispositions
described in PARTheory’s personality subtheory (and elucidated later). The
reformulated postulate of the theory now states that perceived rejection by
a significant other at any point in life is likely to be associated with the same
cluster of personality dispositions found among children and adults rejected
by major caregivers in childhood.1
Empirical support for my initial hunch about the importance of intimate
adult relationships came in 2001 as a result of research completed by Abdul
Khaleque among 88 heterosexual adult women at the University of Connecticut
(Khaleque, 2001; Rohner & Khaleque, in press). The study explored the
way in which remembered childhood experiences of maternal and paternal
acceptance and behavioral control influenced the relation between current
partner acceptance and control and the women’s psychological adjustment.
Results confirmed my expectation that women’s adjustment would be impaired
to the degree that they experienced their intimate partners to be somewhat
rejecting and behaviorally controlling. Unexpectedly, however, results also
showed that both perceived partner acceptance and remembrances of paternal
acceptance had a significantly greater impact on women’s psychological
adjustment than did remembrances of maternal acceptance.
Intrigued by these findings, I wanted to see if similar results would be
found in other cultures around the world. Accordingly, I invited a number
of colleagues internationally to help explore three questions: (a) To what
extent is perceived acceptance or rejection by an intimate partner in adulthood
associated with the same form of psychological adjustment or maladjustment
that perceived parental acceptance-rejection is known to be in childhood?
(b) To what extent do remembrances of maternal or paternal acceptance in
childhood mediate or influence in other ways the association between
perceived partner acceptance and adults’ psychological adjustment? (c) Do
statistical relations found in these questions vary by culture, ethnicity, gender
of parent, gender of offspring, or other contextual factors?

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 Rohner / Introduction 7

As a result of this call for collaborative international research, 14 studies

are now completed, under way, or planned. Eight of these studies are finished
and are included in this special issue. They include work from Colombia and
Puerto Rico, Finland, India, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, and Turkey and are among
mostly European Americans. To build a cumulative and generalizing body
of cross-cultural knowledge about the three research questions, all studies
employed the same five self-report measures found in the Handbook for the
Study of Parental Acceptance and Rejection (Rohner & Khaleque, 2005a),
and all drew from the conceptual framework provided by PARTheory (see
Rohner & Khaleque, 2005a). All measures were translated as needed to
accommodate language differences. These measures included the following:

Intimate Adult Relationship Questionnaire (IARQ; Rohner, 2007b) or the

Intimate Partner Acceptance-Rejection/Control Questionnaire (IPAR/CQ;
Rohner, 2005a). These two measures are almost identical except that the
IARQ contains one additional item needed to help distinguish intimate part-
ners who are true attachment figures from those who are significant others,
as defined in PARTheory.2 Both measures assess adults’ perceptions of their
partners’ acceptance or rejection and behavioral control. Behavioral control,
however, is featured in only one of the articles contained in this special issue.
Both measures are designed in such a way that the lower the score individ-
uals self-report, the more accepting they perceive their partners to be.

Adult versions of the Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire

(Adult PARQ; Rohner, 2005c) or Parental Acceptance Rejection/Control
Questionnaire (Adult PARQ/Control; Rohner, 2005b) for both mothers and
fathers. These two measures are virtually identical except that the PARQ/
Control has a 13-item Behavioral Control scale built into it. The mother
version of the questionnaire assesses adults’ remembrances of their mothers’
accepting-rejecting behaviors in childhood. The other version assesses remem-
brances of fathers’ accepting-rejecting behaviors in childhood. The PARQ/
Control also assesses adults’ remembrances of their parents’ behavioral
control in childhood. It is important to note that the partner versions of these
questionnaires are almost identical with the parent versions. The only differ-
ence is that the partner versions say “My partner does . . .” (e.g., “does not
really love me”), whereas the adult versions say “My mother [or father] did
. . .” (e.g., “did not really love me”). As with the partner versions of these
questionnaires, the lower the scores that individuals self-report on the PARQ
and PARQ/Control, the more accepting they remember their parents to have
been in childhood.

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8 Cross-Cultural Research

Adult Personality Assessment Questionnaire (Adult PAQ; Rohner &

Khaleque, 2005b). This is a measure of adults’ psychological adjustment as
assessed by seven personality dispositions central to PARTheory’s personality
subtheory, described later. Individuals who self-report low scores on the
PAQ are psychologically better adjusted than individuals who self-report
higher scores.
Personal Information Form (Rohner, 2005d). This questionnaire (or ones
similar to it created in individual countries) asks for demographic information
such as the respondent’s age, gender, level of education, marital status, and
occupation.

Brief Overview of PARTheory and Measures

As I noted above, research reported in this special issue is guided by

PARTheory and its associated measures. The theory is an evidence-based
theory of socialization and life span development. It aims to predict and explain
major causes, consequences, and other correlates of interpersonal acceptance-
rejection worldwide (Rohner, 1986; Rohner, Khaleque, & Cournoyer, 2007;
Rohner & Rohner, 1980). As viewed in PARTheory, interpersonal acceptance
and rejection together are said to form a bipolar continuum called the warmth
dimension. Acceptance anchors one end of the dimension, and rejection
anchors the other. Thus, the warmth dimension relates to the quality of the
affectional bond between individuals and to the physical, verbal, and symbolic
behaviors individuals use to express these feelings. The acceptance end of
the continuum is marked by affection, love, nurturance, comfort, support,
and other positive expressions of caring. The rejection end is marked by the
absence or significant withdrawal of these feelings and behaviors and by
the presence of a variety of physically and psychologically hurtful behaviors
and affects. Rejection can be expressed in three principal ways. Specifically,
an individual can be cold and unaffectionate, indifferent and neglecting, or
hostile and aggressive toward others. In addition, rejection can be subjectively
experienced by an individual in the form of undifferentiated rejection.
Undifferentiated rejection refers to individuals’ beliefs that their significant
other does not really care about or love them, even though there might not
be clear behavioral indicators that the other person is cold and unaffectionate,
hostile and aggressive, or indifferent and neglecting.
One of PARTheory’s major predictions is that rejection by a significant
other has the same negative effects on the psychological adjustment, behavioral
functioning, and cognitive processing of children and adults universally—
regardless of differences in culture, language, race, gender, or other such

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 Rohner / Introduction 9

defining conditions. This is said to come about because in PARTheory humans

are thought to have a phylogenetically acquired need for care, comfort, nur-
turance, support, and other expressions of positive regard from the people
most important to them (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Rohner, 1975, 1986).
The theory also postulates that when this need for positive response is not
adequately met, humans everywhere have the phylogenetically acquired
tendency to develop a specific constellation of behavioral, emotional, and
cognitive dispositions specified in the theory’s personality subtheory.
The personality subtheory postulates that the perception of rejection by
significant others—especially by attachment figures—is likely to lead to
anxiety and a sense of insecurity. In addition, rejection is expected to lead to
the seven personality dispositions explicitly measured by the PAQ (used in
this special issue). These dispositions include (a) anger, aggression, passive
aggression, or problems with the management of hostility and aggression;
(b) dependence or defensive independence, depending on the form, frequency,
timing, and intensity of rejection; (c) impaired self-esteem; (d) impaired self-
adequacy; (e) emotional unresponsiveness; (f) emotional instability; and
(g) negative worldview. Negative worldview, negative self-esteem, negative
self-adequacy, and some of these other personality dispositions are important
elements in the distorted mental representations or social cognitions common
among rejected people (Rohner, 2004; Rohner et al., 2007). For example,
many rejected persons tend to perceive hostility in others where none was
intended or to see deliberate rejection in the unintended acts of others.
A substantial amount of empirical evidence supports almost without
exception the major postulates of personality subtheory, at least in terms
of parent-child relationships (Khaleque & Rohner, 2002; Rohner, 2007a;
Rohner & Britner, 2002). Evidence in this special issue lends substantial
support to the postulates as they pertain to intimate adult relationships. For
example, intimate partners and parents (both mothers and fathers) in all eight
studies included in this special issue were, on average, perceived to be warm
and loving (accepting). More important, perhaps, is the fact that perceived
partner acceptance and remembered parental (both maternal and paternal)
acceptance in childhood correlated significantly with men’s and women’s
psychological adjustment in most of the societies.
In a matrix of 48 correlations, only five apparent exceptions to this conclu-
sion stand out. Specifically, the psychological adjustment of Finnish men does
not appear to be related significantly to their feelings about their partners’
acceptance, although the adjustment of Finnish women is. Similarly, the
psychological adjustment of Colombian men does not appear to be related
significantly to remembrances of their fathers’ acceptance, although the

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10 Cross-Cultural Research

adjustment of Colombian women is. Finally, the most unusual results were
found in Japan where the psychological adjustment of men appears not to
be related significantly to either perceived partner or paternal acceptance,
but it is related to perceived maternal acceptance. The psychological adjust-
ment of Japanese women, on the other hand, is related to both perceived
partner and paternal acceptance, but it is not correlated significantly with
perceived maternal acceptance. Speculations about these unusual findings
are provided in each of the articles dealing with these countries.
The picture becomes more complicated when the authors of articles in this
special issue perform multiple regression analyses to estimate the unique
or independent contributions that intimate partners’ versus mothers’ versus
fathers’ perceived acceptance make to the psychological adjustment of men
versus women in each society. For women, intimate partners and fathers,
but not necessarily mothers, tend often to make significant and independent
contributions to psychological adjustment. Predictors of men’s psychological
adjustment in these eight societies are much more variable. Unlike for women,
no simple conclusion can be drawn about cross-cultural trends for men.
Clearly, much more work must be done within individual nations cross-
culturally to try to understand why intimate partners—or one parent or the
other—sometimes tend to drop out as unique predictors of men’s and women’s
psychological adjustment.

Notes
1. Parental acceptance-rejection theory (PARTheory) takes its name from its original
postulate about the primary importance of perceived parental acceptance-rejection in childhood.
However, evidence provided in this special issue and elsewhere overwhelmingly supports the
reformulated postulate about the importance of perceived acceptance-rejection by an attachment
figure at any point in the life span. Accordingly, the theory could now be called interpersonal
acceptance-rejection theory. But because the label PARTheory is so widely recognized inter-
nationally, the theory’s initial name is retained.
2. The concept of significant other is defined in PARTheory as any person with whom an
individual has a relatively long-lasting emotional tie, who is uniquely important to the individual,
and who is interchangeable with no one else. An attachment figure is a significant other, but
the definition of attachment figure also includes a criterion not included in the definition of
significant other. That is, to be an attachment figure—as construed in PARTheory—one’s
sense of emotional security, happiness, and well-being must be dependent to some degree on
the quality of the relationship with the other person. On the Intimate Adult Relationship
Questionnaire and the Intimate Partner Acceptance-Rejection/Control Questionnaire used in
this research, an attachment figure is defined importantly by an affirmative response to the
question “Is your overall sense of emotional security, comfort, and well-being affected by your
feelings about your relationship with your partner?”

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 Rohner / Introduction 11

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perceived rejection. American Psychologist, 59, 827-840.
Rohner, R. P. (2005a). Intimate Partner Acceptance-Rejection/Control Questionnaire (IPAR/CQ):
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Ronald P. Rohner is director of the Ronald and Nancy Rohner Center for the Study of Parental
Acceptance and Rejection in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at
the University of Connecticut, Storrs. He is also professor emeritus of human development and
family studies and of anthropology at the university. His research interests focus on interpersonal
acceptance and rejection and on major styles of parenting—especially the warmth dimension
of parenting—and their worldwide consequences for children and adults.

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