Assor, A., Roth, G., & Deci, E. (2004) | References

What This Research Found

Avi Assor, Guy Roth, and Edward Deci's landmark study provided empirical evidence for what clinicians had long observed: parental love that comes with conditions damages children's psychological development in predictable, measurable ways. Published in the Journal of Personality and cited over 1,400 times, this research translated abstract clinical concepts into concrete, testable findings.

Conditional regard creates contingent self-esteem. Across four studies involving Israeli adolescents and young adults, the researchers found that when parents made affection conditional on meeting standards—whether academic, behavioural, or emotional—children developed what they termed "contingent self-esteem." This is self-worth that isn't stable or internal but rises and crashes based on external validation. Success brings temporary relief; failure brings devastating deflation. This pattern is precisely what clinicians observe in both narcissistic patients and survivors of narcissistic parenting—the desperate need for external validation to feel okay, the inability to maintain stable self-regard independently.

Both positive AND negative conditional regard cause harm. Perhaps the study's most important finding was that conditional regard damages children regardless of whether it takes the form of extra warmth for meeting standards (conditional positive regard) or withdrawal for failing to meet them (conditional negative regard). The golden child who receives parental enthusiasm for achievements and the scapegoat who receives parental coldness for failures are both harmed—differently, but equally. The golden child develops compulsive achievement-seeking, never feeling their accomplishments are enough. The scapegoat develops emotional suppression, learning that their authentic feelings threaten parental connection. Both lose access to genuine, intrinsic motivation.

Conditional regard produces resentment toward parents—even when children "succeed." The studies found that children who experienced conditional regard resented their parents, whether or not they successfully met parental standards. This is a crucial finding: the harm isn't simply from failing to earn love, but from the conditionality itself. Even children who consistently achieved and received parental warmth resented that the warmth had to be earned. This resentment often remains unconscious and guilt-laden—children feel they "should" be grateful for parents who "just wanted them to succeed"—but it persists into adulthood and affects the relationship throughout life. Survivors often experience breakthrough recognition when they realise their confusing mix of longing and resentment toward "well-meaning" parents has a documented cause.

The key insight: conditional love isn't love—it's control. Self-Determination Theory distinguishes between controlling parenting (which undermines autonomy) and autonomy-supportive parenting (which respects the child's separate self). Conditional regard is a form of control that looks like love. What appears to be involved parenting—high expectations, invested engagement, enthusiasm for achievements—may actually be narcissistic parenting that treats the child as an extension of parental ego rather than as a separate person with their own developmental trajectory. The conditionality communicates: "You are not valued for who you are, but for what you provide me—pride, validation, reflected glory."

How This Research Is Used in the Book

Assor's research appears prominently in Chapter 4: What Causes Narcissism? where the book examines how narcissistic traits develop across generations. The research provides empirical grounding for what might otherwise seem like abstract psychodynamic concepts:

"Assor measured this in the real world through what he called parental conditional regard—affection conditional on meeting parent-imposed standards. Both conditional positive regard (warmth when you succeed) and conditional negative regard (withdrawal when you fail) predicted the same outcomes: resentment towards parents, compulsive task persistence even without motivation, and most critically, self-esteem that rises and crashes based on external validation."

This passage uses Assor's work to bridge theory and lived experience. Many survivors recognise their parents' behaviour in abstract descriptions of narcissistic parenting but struggle to name specific harms because their parents were "involved" and "wanted the best." Conditional regard names what happened without requiring survivors to prove overt abuse.

The research also appears in Chapter 12: The Unseen Child, where it illuminates how the child of a narcissistic parent loses access to authentic selfhood:

The book uses Assor's concept of compulsive striving to explain why survivors often achieve impressive external success while feeling hollow inside—they were trained to perform, not to be.

Why This Matters for Survivors

If you were raised with conditional love, this research offers both validation and a framework for understanding patterns you may have struggled to name.

Your unstable self-worth has a documented cause. That pattern of feeling worthless after failure and briefly okay after success—only to need more success—is the predictable outcome of conditional regard. The research shows this isn't a character flaw or failure of perspective. It's what happens when your foundational sense of worth was never established unconditionally. Your nervous system learned, through thousands of interactions before you could critically evaluate them, that your worth depends on performance. Of course your self-esteem rises and crashes with external validation—you were trained for exactly that.

Your compulsive achievement-seeking makes sense as survival. If love was conditional on performance, you learned that achievement equals survival. The driven quality you may not be able to turn off—the inability to rest after accomplishment, the immediate pivot to "what's next?"—was trained into you. When achievement was required for parental warmth, your nervous system correctly identified achievement as essential for safety. The drivenness isn't pathology; it's an adaptation to an environment where love had to be earned. Understanding this doesn't automatically stop the pattern, but it reframes compulsive striving as a survival mechanism rather than a moral failing.

Your resentment toward "well-meaning" parents is valid. Many survivors of conditional regard carry guilt for resenting parents who "just wanted them to succeed." Assor's research validates that resentment: conditional regard produces it, regardless of parental intent. Your parents may have genuinely believed they were helping you by making love contingent. Their intentions don't change the impact. You can acknowledge that they may have meant well while also recognising that conditional love caused predictable harm. The resentment you feel isn't ingratitude—it's a natural response to having your worth made transactional.

You can develop unconditional self-regard. The damage from conditional regard isn't permanent, though it requires more than insight to repair. What you're building now is what should have developed in childhood: unconditional self-regard—the capacity to maintain your sense of worth regardless of external circumstances. This means finding relationships where you're valued for who you are, not what you achieve, and gradually internalising that experience. It means learning to validate yourself rather than compulsively seeking external validation. It means recognising when the old patterns activate and choosing differently. The conditional regard created neural patterns; new experiences can create new ones.

Clinical Implications

For psychiatrists, psychologists, and trauma-informed clinicians, Assor's research has direct implications for recognising and treating adults raised with conditional regard.

Recognise conditional regard as a form of emotional abuse. Parents who love conditionally often present as "involved" and "high-achieving." They may have provided material resources, educational opportunities, and active engagement in their children's lives. Clinicians should assess whether parental warmth was contingent on performance. Key indicators include: achievement-oriented family narratives ("We're a family of achievers"), difficulty identifying parental affection unconnected to performance, and patients who describe their childhood positively but present with the characteristic symptoms of conditional regard (contingent self-esteem, compulsive striving, ambivalent resentment toward parents).

Connect achievement patterns to attachment history. Patients presenting with compulsive striving, unstable self-esteem, workaholism, or chronic dissatisfaction despite success may have conditional regard histories. The perfectionism isn't about standards—it's about survival. The drivenness isn't ambition—it's anxiety about worth. Linking current patterns to developmental origins supports insight and creates space for change. These patients often have difficulty believing they're "allowed" to feel harmed by parents who provided opportunities and encouragement.

Address the resentment directly. Patients raised with conditional regard often feel guilty for resenting parents who "just wanted the best." They may defend their parents vigorously while simultaneously expressing hostility they don't quite understand. Validating that conditional regard causes predictable resentment—regardless of parental intent—can be liberating. The research gives permission to have the feelings that the family system forbade.

The therapeutic relationship can model unconditional positive regard. The therapist who remains consistently warm regardless of patient "performance" in therapy offers a corrective experience. Patients raised with conditional regard may try to be "good patients"—bringing insights, making progress, pleasing the therapist—rather than authentic ones. They may interpret the therapist's engagement as contingent on their being interesting or improving. Explicitly naming this dynamic and providing consistent regard despite patient "failures" can gradually create new relational models.

Expect shame as a core affect. Conditional regard produces deep shame—not guilt about specific actions, but a pervasive sense that the authentic self is insufficient, unworthy, wrong. When love requires earning, the self that exists before earning is implicitly devalued. Therapeutic approaches that address shame directly (such as compassion-focused therapy) may be more effective than those focused primarily on behaviour or cognition.

Broader Implications

This research extends far beyond individual therapy rooms, illuminating how conditional regard dynamics shape society across multiple domains.

Parenting Culture and Achievement Pressure

Contemporary parenting cultures—particularly in high-achieving socioeconomic contexts—often inadvertently promote conditional regard. The emphasis on grades, activities, accomplishments, and "optimisation" can communicate that the child's worth depends on performance. "Good parenting" becomes synonymous with producing successful children, transforming children into vehicles for parental validation. Assor's research suggests that the parenting practices valorised in competitive educational environments may be creating precisely the contingent self-esteem that undermines genuine flourishing. The "helicopter parent" who monitors every grade and manages every activity may be communicating conditional regard regardless of conscious intent.

Educational Settings and Teacher Regard

Teachers who show more warmth to high-performing students replicate conditional regard dynamics. Research extending Assor's work has found that teacher conditional regard produces similar effects to parental conditional regard: contingent self-esteem, compulsive striving, and resentment. Students learn their worth is contingent not just at home but at school—the message reinforced across environments. Educational reforms might consider how assessment practices, tracking systems, and classroom dynamics communicate (or fail to communicate) unconditional positive regard for all students.

Workplace Performance Management

Bosses who provide recognition only for exceptional performance create conditional regard environments at scale. The employee whose value depends entirely on their last quarter's results experiences a professional version of what children of narcissistic parents experienced developmentally. Employees develop contingent self-esteem tied to performance reviews and resentment toward managers who appear warmly engaged after successes and distant after failures. Organisational practices that provide consistent recognition of employee worth—separate from performance assessment—may improve engagement and reduce the burnout that comes from conditional professional regard.

Golden Child / Scapegoat Family Dynamics

Assor's distinction between conditional positive and conditional negative regard maps directly onto the golden child and scapegoat dynamic in narcissistic families. The golden child receives conditional positive regard: extra warmth, praise, and affection contingent on meeting parental standards and serving parental narcissistic needs. The scapegoat receives conditional negative regard: withdrawal, criticism, and coldness for failing to meet standards or for carrying projected parental shame. Both children are harmed. The golden child develops compulsive achievement orientation and may carry guilt about their "favoured" status. The scapegoat develops emotional suppression, chronic shame, and often difficulty believing they deserve good treatment. Both struggle with authentic self-worth.

Intergenerational Transmission of Conditional Regard

Conditional regard tends to perpetuate across generations through multiple mechanisms. Parents who experienced conditional regard often have contingent self-esteem themselves—and their children's achievements become narcissistic supply, boosting parental self-worth temporarily. These parents may genuinely love their children but experience their children's successes and failures as reflections of their own worth. This intergenerational pattern transmits conditional regard even when parents consciously intend differently. Breaking the cycle requires parents to address their own conditional regard wounds and develop stable self-worth that doesn't depend on their children's performance.

Self-Determination and Autonomy

Assor's research is grounded in Self-Determination Theory, which identifies autonomy, competence, and relatedness as basic psychological needs. Conditional regard frustrates all three: it undermines autonomy by controlling behaviour through contingent affection; it distorts competence by making achievement about worth rather than mastery; and it corrupts relatedness by making relationships transactional rather than unconditional. The research thus connects to broader questions about human flourishing. Environments that support genuine autonomy—in families, schools, workplaces—may promote the unconditional self-regard that conditional regard undermines.

Limitations and Considerations

No research is without limitations, and responsible engagement with this paper requires acknowledging several.

Retrospective self-report. The studies relied on adult children's memories of parental behaviour, which may be influenced by current relationship quality, mood states, or reconstructive memory processes. Prospective longitudinal studies—following children from infancy into adulthood—would strengthen causal claims, though they face practical challenges.

Cultural context. The research was conducted primarily with Israeli participants. What constitutes "conditional" versus "appropriate expectations" may vary across cultures. Parenting practices that seem controlling in one context may be normative in another. Cross-cultural replication has generally supported the findings, but cultural variation in how conditional regard is expressed and experienced deserves attention.

Correlation versus causation. While the research documents associations between conditional regard and outcomes, establishing that conditional regard causes these outcomes (rather than correlating with other harmful parenting practices) requires additional evidence. The theoretical framework of Self-Determination Theory supports causal interpretation, but alternative explanations cannot be fully ruled out.

Individual differences. Not all children respond identically to conditional regard. Temperament, genetic factors, and compensatory relationships may moderate effects. The research documents average effects; individual outcomes vary.

Historical Context

This 2004 study emerged from decades of theoretical development in Self-Determination Theory (SDT), which Edward Deci and Richard Ryan began developing in the 1970s. SDT challenged behaviourist assumptions that external rewards straightforwardly motivate behaviour, demonstrating instead that external rewards can undermine intrinsic motivation—a finding with profound implications for parenting, education, and work.

The specific focus on conditional regard built on earlier clinical observations, particularly Carl Rogers' concept of "unconditional positive regard" as essential for therapeutic change and healthy development. Assor's contribution was to operationalise and empirically test what Rogers described clinically. By distinguishing conditional positive regard from conditional negative regard, the research added nuance to understanding how different forms of conditional love produce different but related harms.

The paper appeared during a period of growing empirical attention to parenting practices and child development, alongside increasing recognition of psychological maltreatment as distinct from physical abuse. It provided a bridge between clinical theories (from Kohut, Kernberg, and Winnicott) about narcissistic parenting and empirical developmental psychology.

The research has been cited over 1,400 times and has influenced subsequent work on parental control, autonomy support, and the development of self-worth. Follow-up studies by Roth and others have extended the findings to additional domains and populations.

The emotional costs of parents' conditional regard: A self-determination theory analysis

APA Citation