Negative emotions in siblings of individual with a developmental disorder: The roles of early maladaptive schemas and system justification

Research has demonstrated that siblings of individuals with a developmental disorder generally experience negative emotions in their daily life. However, very little is known about psychological predictors behind these negative emotional experiences of siblings of individuals with a developmental disorder. The goal of the current thesis was to examine predictors of emotions among these siblings. By combining knowledge from the domains of siblings of individuals with a developmental disorder, emotions, early maladaptive schemas, and system justification, it was argued that negative emotions of siblings of individuals with developmental disorders would be predicted by higher levels of early maladaptive schemas and lower levels of mental health care system justification. Additionally, it was hypothesized that, siblings of individuals with a developmental disorder would have more negative emotions, maladaptive schemas and a higher tendency for mental health care system justification than siblings of individuals without a developmental disorder. To do this, in one correlational study, data collected from 72 siblings of individuals with a developmental disorder and 109 siblings of individuals without a developmental disorder. Results demonstrated that, as expected, both mental health care system justification tendency and schema domains such as Disconnection and Impaired Autonomy emerged as significant predictors of negative emotions. Morever, individual with a developmental disorder reported more stronger Other Directedness schema domain than siblings of individual without a developmental disorder. In addition, individuals with a developmental disorder reported more siblings-related negative emotions and higher levels of mental health care system justification than siblings of individual without a developmental disorder. The implications and future directions of the study were discussed. Keywords: Sibling, Developmental Disorder, Emotions, Early Maladaptive Schemas, System Justification