 16. Personality and Parenting 353
enting data is independently rated observed 
parenting behavior. These observation-  based 
measures involve the parent and child inter -
acting with each other in semistructured or 
structured tasks. Similar to work showing 
that observed personality has lower herita -
bilities than informant-  reported personality 
(Borkenau, Riemann, Angleitner, & Spi -
nath, 2001), observed parenting shows less 
heritability than informant-  reported parent -
ing (Kendler & Baker, 2007).
Although observation-  based assessments 
of parenting are highly regarded and some 
analogue measures of parenting exist, par -
enting is commonly measured with self- and 
informant reports collected from family 
members. Aware of the need to account for 
measurement error across these multiple 
measures of parenting (e.g., Westfall & 
Yarkoni, 2016), many studies of parenting 
explicitly model error with latent variables. 
Multiple perspectives of the parent’s behav -
ior produce a measure of parenting with 
higher content and criterion validity than 
any single measure on its own, so most high- 
quality research on parenting incorporates 
information from multiple reporters. One 
complication is that the correlation across 
different measures of parenting is modest, 
typically around .20 to .30. Consequently, 
when information from different reporters 
of parenting is forced onto a single latent 
factor, the modest degree of correspondence 
across reporters results in poor model fit 
and low factor loadings (e.g., Esposito, Ser -
vera, Garcia-  Banda, & Del Giudice, 2016). 
Furthermore, studies that separate trait and 
method factors show the magnitude of the 
method factors to be larger than the mag -
nitude of the trait (i.e., parenting) factors 
(e.g., Bauer et al., 2013), which implies the 
portion of information that is shared across 
reporters is relatively small. And, in fact, 
recent research indicates that the “storm 
and stress” of personality development in 
adolescence is evident for parent reports 
of personality, but not for adolescent self- 
reports of personality, suggesting that par -
ents and children are witnessing changes in 
personality at different rates (Göllner et al., 
2017). Finally, reporter-  specific parenting 
information (i.e., method factors) appears to 
include more true score than measurement 
error (Schofield, Parke, Coltrane, & Weaver, 2016). In summary, the portion of variance 
in parenting that is shared across all report -
ers is (1) relatively low and (2) missing much 
of the true score, so traditional approaches 
of forcing information from different report -
ers onto a single factor compromise both re -
liability and (far more importantly) validity.
To get a well-  rounded understanding of 
whether Kevin’s mother is responsive, re -
searchers should use multiple sources of 
information for measurement (i.e., observa -
tional data, family reports, and self-  reports), 
but how would they model them? One ap -
proach that satisfies concerns regarding 
both reliability and content validity involves 
distributing information from each reporter 
across the indicators, so that the latent fac -
tor includes the rater-  specific variance, as 
well as the common variance across raters 
(e.g., Schofield et al., 2009). When making 
measurement and data-  analytic choices, 
researchers should take into account issues 
of reliability (e.g., factor loadings), validity 
(e.g., the need to model all true score vari -
ance, using information from all available 
raters), and feasibility (e.g., a measurement 
model simple enough to enable longitudinal 
structural models that can provide support 
for causal inference).
Parental Socialization of  Personality  Traits
After decades of challenges from various dis -
ciplines that claimed development is mostly 
due to genetics, peers, or various other extra -
familial environments (i.e., everything but 
parenting), it is now well-  established that 
parenting affects child development (e.g., 
Cowan, Cowan, Pruett, Pruett, & Wong, 
2009; Spoth, Redmond, & Shin, 1998). 
Consequently, parenting is also believed to 
affect offspring personality beyond shared 
genetic inheritance. For example, Mrs. Mc -
Callister’s consistent and responsible parent -
ing behavior may have positively influenced 
Kevin to be more conscientious (e.g., he 
needed an American Dental Association– 
approved toothbrush). One prevalent expla -
nation for the effect of parent behavior on 
offspring personality is that parents teach 
children how to behave through explicit and 
implicit socialization. For example, parents 
who are warm and supportive toward their 
child are modeling behaviors related to high 