Personality and Individual Differences 86 (2015) 348–353

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Personality and Individual Differences
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid

Autonomy supportive fathers beget system-supporting children:
The role of autonomy support on protesting behavior
Sook Ning Chua ⁎, Frédérick L. Philippe
Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

a r t i c l e

i n f oArticle history:
Received 11 March 2015
Received in revised form 20 June 2015
Accepted 25 June 2015
Available online 8 July 2015
Keywords:
Social support
Social justiceSelf-determination theory
Interpersonal relationshipSocial inﬂuencea b s t r a c t
In this paper we examined the inﬂuence of father autonomy support on protesting behavior. Drawing from Relational Model Theory and Self-determination Theory, we hypothesized that individuals' perception and interactions with authority ﬁgures are shaped by their experiences with their fathers. When people experience theirfathers as empathetic and caring, they are more likely to view other authority ﬁgures positively and make benevolent interpretations of their actions. We found support for our hypothesis in two studies conducted in Malaysia
and Canada with self-reported engagement in political causes. As expected, perceived father autonomy support
was related to positive perception of the government and less protesting against the government. Overall, thepresent paper provides evidence that children's internalized representations of their fathers are related to intentions and behaviors to change the social systems.
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
As long as governments have existed, it seems that people havefound reasons to protest against the organized system. For instance,
an artifact from the Antiquity (dated around 2350 BC) recorded alarge-scale protest against the ruling government in Babylonia/Sumer
for their heavy tax laws (Burg, 2004). More recently, there have beena series of well-publicized revolutions and demonstrations against governments such as the Arab Spring, which took place from 2010 to 2012
in various Arab nations as a result of dissatisfaction against the government. Whether the cause of dissatisfaction was due to corruption in thegovernment or the government's failure to uphold human rights, ultimately the government lost the goodwill of the citizens because the citizens viewed the government as untrustworthy and therefore
illegitimate. Yet, research has consistently shown that people are motivated to maintain the system (be it political, social or religious) by perceiving the system to be just and fair (Kay & Jost, 2014). This motive tojustify the system fulﬁlls both epistemic and existential motives and isassociated with decreased willingness to protest against the system(Jost et al., 2012). Little research, however, has investigated the dispositional and developmental factors that lead people to justify systems. A
recent study has shed light on one of such factor, showing that themore people perceived their fathers to be autonomy supportive, themore likely they were to justify the system (Chua & Philippe, 2015).
The present paper further investigates parental inﬂuence on system⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: sook.ning@gmail.com (S.N. Chua).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.06.038
0191-8869/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

justiﬁcation by examining the relationship between perceived father
autonomy support, and support for the government and people's willingness to protest.
Relational Model Theory (RMT) posits that there are four fundamental relational models: communal sharing (CS), authority ranking (AR),equity matching (EM) and market pricing (MP) (Fiske, 2004). CS relationships are based on what people have in common, AR relationships
are based on the hierarchy and ranking between individuals, EM relationships are based on additive differences and maintaining an equalbalance, and MP relationships are based on proportionality and cost–beneﬁt analysis. These models are schemas used to organize and structure the social world and they drive an individual's interpretation andresponses to social interactions. These models are also used to makemoral judgments and to determine what is right or wrong such thatan action is perceived as immoral when it violates one of the models(Rai & Fiske, 2011). Of interest to this paper are the AR model and theassociated moral action to respect and obedience to a superior. In
these asymmetrical linear relationships, the subordinate has to depend
and trust on the superior to care and protect him. His fate is, in many
ways, determined by the good will (intentions, desires, and actions) of
the superior (Houde, Sherman, White, & Sheppard, 2004). Just as it isa moral act to obey his superior, it is a moral act for the superior to protect him. As long as the superior maintains the appropriate role, people
will view authority ﬁgures as legitimate and just, and will work to maintain and support the system (van der Toorn, Tyler, & Jost, 2011).
To date, few studies have examined how childhood experiences inﬂuence one's motivation to legitimize authority and the government.
Drawing on both RMT and Self-determination Theory (SDT), we suggest

S.N. Chua, F.L. Philippe / Personality and Individual Differences 86 (2015) 348–353

that people's schema of authority is shaped by how their parents treatedthem. The optimal type of support is one that fulﬁlls an individual's
fundamental psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness (Deci & Ryan, 2000). SDT termed this type of support as autonomy support and it is characterized by empathy and support of therecipient's authentic being. There is a large body of evidence conﬁrmingthat autonomy supportive parenting is associated with greater autonomous motivation (e.g. Chirkov & Ryan, 2001; Grolnick & Ryan, 1989), autonomous internalization of values (Chirkov, Ryan, Kim, & Kaplan, 2003)
and well-being (Ryan & Deci, 2001). There is much less research on how
parental autonomy support shapes people's broader views of society.
Some of the core aspects of relational models are innate and unlearned, and people automatically encode and retrieve social information based on these categories (Fiske, 1995). Despite culturalvariations in the prevalence and content of these categories, all humans
have the same relational models to organize sociality (Fiske, 2004).
Nonetheless, children need to learn how to implement these models
in culturally appropriate ways (Fiske, 1991) and the implementationis heavily inﬂuenced by their ﬁrst relationships (Fiske, 1993). Early experiences with one's primary caregivers impact the way a person
views, understands and interacts with the social world (e.g. Hart,
2014; Levy, Blatt, & Shaver, 1998). Thus even though all persons will
naturally form some relationships in terms of hierarchy—distinguishing
between superiors and inferiors—there are individual differences in the
representations of authority ﬁgures. Some people may be more likely toperceive authority ﬁgures as controlling and interpret their actions as
malevolent and ill-intentioned while others may perceive the same authority ﬁgures as supportive and their actions as well-intentioned andgood. The individual's AR model guides the perception and interpretation of the superior's motives and behavior and subsequent responses
to the respective authority ﬁgure. Therefore, one will view the system
as stable and trustworthy just as one's parents were stable and trustworthy, or conversely one will view the system as untrustworthy if
one's parents were untrustworthy.
There is initial evidence that fathers play a particularly inﬂuential
role in shaping the child's view of authority. The more people perceived
their fathers to be autonomy supportive, the more they saw the government as just and fair and the less willing they were to change the political system (Chua & Philippe, 2015). Mother autonomy support was not
associated with system justiﬁcation. This might be due to the role of fathers in the family, as fathers tend to play the role of the authority ﬁgurein the home and are the symbolic representation of authority in society.
Even within the egalitarian 21st century family unit, fathers continue tobe perceived as the authority ﬁgure in the household (Paquette, 2004)
and hold the role of reinforcing the rules of the household andimplementing the consequences of rule breaking (Lamb, 2000). The development of the “egalitarian but traditional” framework in the 90s has
maintained this role differentiation and fathers continue to have greater
power and prestige in the family unit than do mothers (Carrasco &Rohner, 2013; Cotter, Joan, & Reeve, 2011). Within the larger societal
context, men continue to dominate high-level positions in organizations
and government and women are systematically assigned to positions oflower authority (Alkadry & Tower, 2011). Therefore, we expected thatthe relational schema of fathers would be strongly associated to otherauthority ﬁgures in society, such that experiences with one's father
will inﬂuence the development of AR models and the individual'sview of the government.
We posit that children who experience their fathers (as comparedwith mothers) as understanding, empathetic, and supportive will develop a positive schema of authority ﬁgures and hold a positive attitude towards authority. Speciﬁcally, we expected that father autonomy
support would be positively associated with positive perceptions of
the government and with attitudes towards maintaining the system.
We tested our hypothesis in Malaysia concerning protests for clean
elections and in Quebec, Canada concerning protests for accessible education following a planned raise in tuition fees.

349

2. Study 1
Several unprecedented mass rallies were recently held in Malaysia
for free and clean elections. All rallies were regarded as illegal by thegovernment and the government responded by arresting individuals
who were involved and by using tear gas and chemical-laced water cannons on the protestors.
2.1. Method
2.1.1. Participants, measures and procedure
Advertisements were posted on various online forums and on university campuses to participate on a study on participation in the rally.
One hundred and sixty-three people participated in the online survey(102 females, 61 males; M(age) = 23.68 years, SD(age) = 7.89, ﬁve
missing values). In all analyses, we controlled for the Big Five personality traits (Ten Item Personality Inventory; Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swann,2003), Satisfaction with Life Scale speciﬁc to life in the country (e.g.
“The conditions of my life in this country are excellent.”; Diener,
Emmons, Larsen, & Grifﬁn, 1985), intentions to settle down in the country (“I intend to settle down in this country”), religiosity, and the extent towhich participants identiﬁed with the country and their ethnic group,
gender, and age. We wanted to investigate if father autonomy support
inﬂuenced willingness to change the system above and beyond thesecovariates (personality traits and ideological beliefs) which have beenshown to contribute to system justiﬁcation beliefs (Jost, Glaser,
Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003).
Participants were asked to complete measures of parental support
and attitude towards the government and towards the movement.
The 9-item autonomy support measure was taken from the 21-item
Perception of Parents College Student Scale (Robbins, 1994) andcorresponded to the autonomy support subscale of that measure. Participants rated the extent to which they perceived their parents to beautonomy supportive on a 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree)
Likert scale. Father and mother autonomy supports were rated separately. Sample items included “My mother seems to know how I feel
about things” and “My mother spends a lot of time with me”. The Cronbachalphas for perceived mother autonomy support were .86 and for perceived father autonomy support .88.
In addition, participants completed a 3-item measure of their view ofthe government's response to the movement (“The government reallytries to help the people.”, “The government presented an acceptable offerto the people.” and “The government listened to the people and was open
to them.”). The Cronbach alpha was .89. They also completed a 5-item
measure looking at whether people should be allowed to protest for
free elections (e.g. “I believe that the people have a right to express theirviews”, “I believe that the people should stop demanding for free elections(R)”). The Cronbach alpha was .83. Finally, participants rated the extent
to which they intended to attend the next rally.
2.1.2. Results and discussion
Means, standard deviations and zero-order correlations are presented in Table 1. Perceived parent autonomy support was highly correlated
and surprisingly unrelated to the outcome measures. However, theTable 1Means, standard deviations and correlations for Study 1.

1. Mother autonomy support
2. Father autonomy support
3. Perceptions of government
4. Agreement with rally
5. Intention to rallyNote.
⁎ p b .05.
⁎⁎ p b .01.

M

SD

1

2

3

4

5

4.76
4.23
2.48
6.14
4.45

1.18
1.29
1.21
.91
2.21

–
.41⁎⁎
−.10
.01
.03

–
.08
−.07
.01

–
−.66⁎⁎
−.39⁎

–
.52⁎⁎

–

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S.N. Chua, F.L. Philippe / Personality and Individual Differences 86 (2015) 348–353

results from the hierarchical linear regressions suggest a likely suppression effect between autonomy support and the outcome measures.
We conducted hierarchical linear regression on perception of government, support for the protests, and intentions to attend the rally(see Table 2). Interestingly, perceived mother autonomy support was
negatively related to perception of government. In contrast perceived
father autonomy support was positively related to perception of government. Such that, the more participants experienced their mother as
autonomy supportive, the more they viewed the government as
responding negatively to the protestors. However, the more participants experienced their fathers as autonomy supportive, the morethey viewed the government as responding positively to the protestors.
The high correlation between perceived mother and father autonomy
supports as well as the signiﬁcant association between perceived parent
autonomy support and the outcome measure when both independent
variables are included in the same equation suggest that the null zeroorder correlations are due to a suppression effect (MacKinnon, Krull, &Lockwood, 2000).
With regard to support for protesting for clean elections, perceived
father autonomy support, but not perceived mother autonomy support,
was negatively related to support for the protests. Likewise, perceived
father autonomy support and not perceived mother autonomy support
were negatively related to intentions. We conducted exploratory analyses examining if gender of the child moderated the relationshipbetween autonomy support and the dependent variables. The interaction terms were not signiﬁcant for any of the dependent variables.
The results from Study 1 revealed that perceived father autonomy
support is positively related to perceiving the government, and negatively related to protesting for clean elections, and intentions to participate in the next rally. Perceived mother autonomy support was
related to a more negative perception of the government but it was unrelated to support for the movement and intentions to participate in thenext rally.
3. Study 2
In the next study, we sought to replicate this ﬁnding in Quebec,
Canada and to look at actual behaviors against the status quo. It is possible that in a relatively hierarchical low-freedom country such as
Malaysia, people are more willing to support the government and tojustify the system in order to avoid harsh consequences such as ﬁnes
or imprisonment (Cichocka & Jost, 2014). We expected that regardlessof structure of society, receiving father autonomy support should facilitate the acceptance of the system, even when the system allows for

opposition and that opposition to the system is commonplace. Given
the ﬁndings of Study 1, we expected that fathers would have a greaterinﬂuence relative to mothers on children's attitude towards thegovernment.
From February to September 2012, there were a series of student
demonstrations against a governmental proposal to increase tuition
fees. At its peak, 185 000 Quebec students went on strike, blocking college and university entrances every day and engaging in various otheracts of protests, ranging from large-scale petitions, street demonstrations, and sabotage. In response to the protests, the National Assemblyof Quebec passed Bill 78 to ensure that no student is denied the rightto receive education and restrictions were also imposed on protests
near university grounds and protests involving 50 or more people.
3.1. Method
3.1.1. Participants, measures and procedure
Students from two large universities in Montreal, Quebec were
contacted to participate in a study on the current student strike. An
email invitation was sent to a random number of full time students
from the two universities. Participants completed an online survey
and were given an opportunity to enter into a draw to win one ofthree prizes worth $125. A total of 529 students who were enrolled in
an undergraduate or graduate level program responded to the survey.
There were 408 females and 121 males, M(age) = 25.32, SD(age) =6.33.
In this study, our covariates were basic demographic data (age, gender, income, and GPA), the Big Five personality traits (Ten Item Personality Inventory; Gosling et al., 2003), academic satisfaction scale andintentions to complete their studies. The academic satisfaction scale(e.g. “The conditions of my life at school are excellent.”) was adaptedfrom the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener et al., 1985). The Cronbachalpha was .88. The intentions to complete the program (e.g. “I am determined to complete my program of studies that I am enrolled in.”) was measured with a 7-item Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly
agree). The Cronbach alpha was .76.
As in Study 1, participants completed measures of perceived maternal and father autonomy supports, and perception of the government's
response to the strike (e.g., “The government presented an acceptable offer
to students”). The reliabilities of these scales were .89 .90 and .93 respectively. To measure their attitude towards the strike, participants rated
the extent to which they agreed on 7-item Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree) with the following three items: “With regard
to the current student strike, I…”, “With regard to the increase in tuition

Table 2
Hierarchical regression analyses of perception of government, agreement with rally, intention to rally in Study 1.
Step

1

2
3
Note.
⁎ p b .05.
⁎⁎ p b .01.

Variables

Age
GenderReligiosity
National identity
Ethnic identity
Neuroticism
Extraversion
Conscientiousness
Agreeableness
Openness
Future intentions
Country satisfaction
Mother autonomy support
Father autonomy support

Perception of government

Agreement with rally
2

Intention to rally
2βBlock FΔRβBlock FΔRβBlock F

ΔR2

−.26⁎
.18
.06
−.20
−.10
−.10
−.04
.05
.13
−.15
.07
.11
−.31⁎⁎
.30⁎⁎

1.85

.17

2.27⁎⁎

.20

.19
.06
.02
.12
−.06
−.21⁎
.01
.06
−.20⁎

2.46⁎

.21⁎

1.58

.01

2.26⁎

.04

2.12⁎

.01

2.31⁎⁎

.10

.25⁎⁎
.10
−.06
.21†
−.04
−.06
.04
.04
−.02
.21†
−.05
−.18
.12
−.29⁎⁎

2.58⁎⁎

.06

2.23⁎

.04

.17
−.03
−.09
.08
−.24⁎

S.N. Chua, F.L. Philippe / Personality and Individual Differences 86 (2015) 348–353

fees, I…” (reverse-scored), and “With regard to the freeze in tuition fees,
I…”. The Cronbach alpha was .88. Finally, participants rated the frequency (1 = Never, 2 = Once, 3 = Sometimes, 4 = At several occasions, 5 =Regularly, 6 = Very regularly) in which they engaged in activities related
to the strike: Wearing a red square as a symbol of protest, marching,signing petitions, protesting Bill 78, and disobeying the police to stopmarching. Overall, 68% of the participants reported engaging in atleast one of these behaviors at least once. More than half of the participants reported wearing a symbolic red square, signing a petition, andmarching at least once (a score of 2 and above) and about 25% reported
having disobeyed the police at least once. An index was created by averaging the scores on all of these behaviors. Cronbach alpha was .88. This
index was log-transformed as the scores were positively skewed.
3.2. Results and discussion
Means, standard deviations and correlations are reported in Table 3.
The correlations revealed that perceived mother autonomy support was
unrelated to the dependent variables, but perceived father autonomy
support was related to a more positive view of the government's response, greater disagreement with the strike, and less behavioral engagement in the strike.
Next, we conducted hierarchical linear regressions on perceptions of
the government, agreement with the strike and behavioral engagementin the strike with father and mother autonomy supports and all our control measures. The results are reported in Table 4. As hypothesized, perceived father autonomy support was signiﬁcantly related to a positive
view of the government's response, and negatively related to agreementwith the strike and to participation in the strike. Perceived mother autonomy support was unrelated to the dependent variables.
We conducted exploratory analyses to investigate if gender moderated the relationship between perceived father autonomy support andthe dependent variables. As in Study 1, gender did not moderate the results, indicating that both males and females responded in a similar
fashion to perceived father autonomy support. Thus, perceived father
autonomy support was associated with a more positive view of the government and a lower likelihood of participation in the student strike.
4. General discussion
People naturally gravitate towards organizing some relationships interms of rank and hierarchy (Fiske, 1993). People also tend to see obedience and deference to superiors as moral and good (Rai & Fiske,2012). In the current paper, we tested our hypothesis in two very different cultures with different real-life causes. In both studies, we foundthat perceived father autonomy support was associated with a positive
view of the government's response, a negative view of the cause and adecreased willingness to participate in movements intended to change
the status quo.
One of the strengths of this paper is that the hypothesis was tested in
two different cultures, which revealed unexpected but interesting differences. First, perceived mother autonomy support was associatedwith a negative view of the government's response in the Asian sample

Table 3Means, standard deviations and correlations in Study 2.

1. Mother autonomy support
2. Father autonomy support
3. Perception of government
4. Agreement of strike
5. Strike behaviorsa

M

SD

1

5.12
4.42
2.24
5.03
1.80

1.24
1.43
1.49
1.72
0.90

–
.31⁎

Note.
a
Untransformed means are reported.
⁎ p b .05.
⁎⁎ p b .01.

.08
−.05
−.02

2

3

4

5

–
.13⁎⁎
−.15⁎⁎−.11⁎–−.72⁎⁎
−.54⁎

–
.69⁎⁎

–

351

but not in the Western sample. This may be due to Malaysia being amore conservative culture where husband–wife relationships are usually hierarchical and roles are clearly distinguished and enforced. Thus
when a child experiences the lower powered spouse as autonomy supportive, the child might be more sympathetic towards other low
powered individuals and more likely to side with the underdog. Second,even though we found support for our hypothesis in both cultures, theeffect sizes were larger in Malaysia than in Canada. This might reﬂect
the close family structure in a collectivistic culture such as Malaysia,
whereby the child is more inﬂuenced by signiﬁcant others. This mightalso be due to Canada having greater political freedom as comparedwith Malaysia, such that attitudes and actions towards the government
are less inﬂuenced by signiﬁcant others and more inﬂuenced by personal choices.1
This paper also contributes to the current understanding of people's
need to maintain a sense of psychological security (Hart, 2014). To thisend, humans have evolved a security system that increases felt security
and decreases anxiety. The three components of this system are attachment, self-esteem, and cultural worldviews, and all three components
are interrelated. For instance, threats to personal relationships can activate an individual's worldview defenses (e.g. system justiﬁcation, justworld beliefs) and conversely threats to the system lead to individuals'
drawing closer to their loved ones (Hart, Shaver, & Goldenberg, 2005).
Our results provide further nuance to the theory by suggesting that individuals who are securely attached to autonomy supportive fathers
may also be more likely to defend the system because they genuinely
believe the system to be good, as their fathers were good. These individuals may not be reacting against threats due to insecurity, but rather because they are securely attached and maintain their benevolent
interpretations of the actions of authority ﬁgures. As in romantic relationships (Murray, Holmes, & Grifﬁn, 1996), these individuals view
the system through rose-colored lenses and interpret the actions of
the authority ﬁgure more positively, enabling them to maintain a secureattachment to the father ﬁgure and by extension to the system. There isindirect support for our hypothesis in the attachment and system justiﬁcation literature such that individuals who have a sense of secure baseare also more likely to view God, the ultimate authority ﬁgure, as loving
and caring, as opposed to distant (Kirkpatrick, 1998). Secure attachment
is also related to increased religiosity (Kirkpatrick, 1998), which is inturn associated with greater system justiﬁcation (Jost et al., 2014).
Some limitations need to be underscored regarding the present research. First, the samples consisted of mainly students and may not be
representative of the general population. However, as the second
study directly examined an issue that was pertinent to students, it isreasonable to use a student sample. In addition, other studies using
community samples have found that father autonomy support is related
to higher levels of system justiﬁcation (Chua & Philippe, 2015). Second,
the two studies had cross-sectional designs. Therefore, the relationshipbetween father autonomy support and willingness to protest remains
unclear. While the alternative explanation (willingness to protest leading to lower perceptions of father autonomy support) seems theoretically unlikely and not the most parsimonious explanation, there may
be a third unmeasured variable accounting for this relationship. Experimental studies that prime autonomy vs. controlling father support andexamine its relationship on willingness to protest and perceptions of social inequality are required to conﬁrm the actual role of perceptions offather autonomy support as dispositional developmental factors
inﬂuencing system justiﬁcation and willingness to protest. Third, it isstill unknown whether actual father autonomy support or just perceptions from the child drive the effect. Some studies found that objective
environmental autonomy-supporting aspects do correlate with people's
perceptions of autonomy support (e.g. Philippe & Vallerand, 2008).
Obtaining fathers' reports as well as children's perceptions of parental

1

We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this effect.

352

S.N. Chua, F.L. Philippe / Personality and Individual Differences 86 (2015) 348–353

Table 4
Hierarchical regression analyses of perception of government, agreement with strike and strike behaviors in Study 2.
Step1

Variables

Age
Gender
IncomeGPA
Neuroticism
Extraversion
Conscientiousness
Agreeableness
Openness
Future intentions
Academic satisfaction
Mother autonomy support
Father autonomy support

2
3

Perception of government

Agreement with strike

Strike behaviors

β

Block FΔR2βBlock FΔR2βBlock F

ΔR2

.04
.06
.11⁎
−.03
−.06
−.03
.08
.04
−.14⁎⁎
.07
−.08
.04
.11⁎

3.76⁎⁎

.065

.02
−.08
−.16⁎⁎.05−.02.00−.17⁎⁎

5.00⁎⁎.084

8.70⁎⁎.139

4.56⁎⁎

.009

.01
.02
−.16⁎⁎
.11⁎
−.08
.08
−.22⁎⁎−.16⁎⁎.17⁎⁎−.09⁎

7.75⁎⁎.011

7.28⁎⁎.014

3.43⁎⁎
3.51⁎⁎

.007
.014

−.02
.12⁎
−.09
.08
.02
−.16⁎⁎

4.85⁎⁎

.022

.10
.02
−.13⁎⁎Note.
⁎ p b .05.
⁎⁎ p b .01.

autonomy support could be a way to shed more light on this issue. It isalso possible that individuals who have positive attitudes towards thegovernment just have unrealistically positive views about their fathers.
Collecting fathers' reports of their parenting styles will allow us to teaseapart perception from reality. Regardless of whether individuals haveoverly positive or overly negative views of their fathers, we believethat it is precisely this perception of the father ﬁgure that colors one's
experiences with other authority ﬁgures. Indeed past studies havefound that a person's perceptions of autonomy are a better predictorof psychological adjustment than the actual reality (O'Connor &Vallerand, 1994).
Our ﬁndings also suggests that there might be a silver lining to receiving paternal controlling support, which is usually associated with
ill-being (Bartholomew, Ntoumanis, Ryan, Bosch, & ThøgersenNtoumani, 2011). Yet, in light of the fact that system change occurs
when the system is viewed as unjust and unfair (Martorana, Galinsky,& Rao, 2005), it is possible that individuals who have received controlling support are quicker to perceive the system as unjust and thus act
to change the system. Future research could measure both controlling
and autonomy support separately and examine the differential effectsof the two types of support from a just or an unjust authority ﬁgure.2
Another interesting avenue for future research is the investigation of
the role of emotions in this relationship. For instance, past research
has shown that controlling support leads to greater anger (Assor,
Kaplan, Kanat-Maymon, & Roth, 2005) and that anger mediates the relationship between system justiﬁcation and willingness to change thesystem (Jost et al., 2012). Receiving controlling support may be a double
edged sword such that the recipient may be the rebel without a cause,
but also the provocateur of important system change.

Author bios
Sook Ning Chua conducts research in social support, self-regulation
and attitudes.
Frederick L. Philippe is an assistant professor at Université du Québec
à Montréal

Declaration of conﬂict of interest
The author(s) declared no potential conﬂicts of interests with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

2

We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

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