Two findings in this model ran counter to our hypotheses. First, we expected that adolescents’ interparental relationship perceptions would fully account for the association between interparental conflict and positivity and threat appraisals. Instead, both interparental conflict and adolescent perceived conflict were each uniquely associated with adolescent threat evaluations. It is possible the unidimensional (i.e., conflict frequency) measurement of adolescent perceptions of parental conflicts, that omit intensity and resolution of parents’ arguments, may explain this result. Further research is needed to better understand this finding. Second, we expected that interparental positivity, independent of level of conflict, would be related to lower levels of perceived threat; however, no such association was found for the whole sample.
