Applying Relational Turbulence Theory to Parent-Child Political Conversations: The Role of (Dis)agreement About Christian Nationalism

ABSTRACT

Christian nationalism, or the belief that America should be governed as a Christian country, is an influential yet fractious political philosophy. This investigation applied relational turbulence theory to understand how (dis)agreement about Christian nationalism may shape parent-child political conversations. A sample of 452 participants completed measures assessing (a) relational turbulence theory variables and (b) their and (c) their parents’ endorsement of Christian nationalism. The study’s results indicated that participants are particularly vexed when they reject Christian nationalism but their parents do not, which is associated with less frequent and more negative political conversations, as well as heightened relationship uncertainty and relational turbulence.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. It is worth clarifying that this study does not hypothesize about nor empirically test the role of biased cognitions. This was a purposeful decision to reduce burden on participants completing the survey, to manage the analytical complexity of a large latent conditional process model, and to emphasize communication (i.e., engagement and valence of messages) rather than cognition. We note that it is exceedingly common for RTT studies to omit model constructs; for example, Dorrance-Hall et al. (2023) omitted engagement and valence, whereas Stager and Schrodt (2023) omitted biased cognitions. This is appropriate because, as Hayes (2022) contended, all mediational pathways in the social sciences are incomplete, as there are always intervening processes that are not explicitly modeled. Of course, the role of biased cognitions in understanding parent-child political conversations is worth attention in future research.