Abstract: As an important mechanism of the parent-child interaction, the mother-adolescent communication plays a vital role in the socialization of the adolescence. Existing studies on the factors of the parent-child communication found the characteristics of the adolescence and the parents could improve the parent-child communication. Guided by the “goodness of fit” theory for the child development period, the match between the adolescent and the context about the personality, the needs, the expectation, and the value was seen as the important factors for the development of the individual and the relation. We assume that not only the adolescent and the mother’s own personality play a role in the mother-adolescent communication, but also the personality match between the adolescent and his/her mother affects each other’s communication style and behavior. Furthermore, previous studies indicated the relation between the personality match and the parent-adolescent conflict. Other researchers have pointed out the adolescent’s attitude toward the parents could improve the level of the parent-adolescent communication. Therefore, we suppose the mother-adolescent mutual personality favor may be an important mediating factor between the personality match and the mother-adolescent communication. The main objectives of this study are: (a) the association between the mother-adolescent personality match and the mutual personality favor; (b) whether the different types of the mother-adolescent personality match have dissimilar frequency and quality of the mother-adolescent communication; (c) explore the mediation effect of the mutual personality favor in the relationship between the mother-adolescent personality match and the mother-adolescent communication.
Method
A total of 632 adolescents of 7-12 grade and their mothers in Chengdu completed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and were evaluated the mutual favor to the other’s personality. Te adolescents also reported their mother-adolescent communication. Through Chi square test, independent t-test, correlation, F-test, and multiple linear regression analysis, the relationship among personality match of mother and adolescent, personality favor and mother-adolescent communication was examined.
Results
(1) The mother-adolescent communications of both extroversive personality, both stable feeling and both low psychoticism were better than those of other personality match types .
(2) Compared to the personality match, the personality favor was a stronger factor for the mother-adolescent communication.
(3) As a mediator, on one hand, the adolescent‘s personality favor toward the mother totally weakened the negative relationship between the mother-adolescent personality match type of the both unstable feeling and the mother-adolescent communication; on the other hand it partly strengthened the positive relation between the mother-adolescent personality match type of the both extroversive personality and the both low psychoticism and the mother-adolescent communication.
Conclusions
The results revealed that the personality match between the mother and her child actually affected the mother-adolescent communication, but the positive function depended on different personality match type. It functioned much lower than the personality favor of the adolescent towards to the mother and worked on the mother-adolescent communication totally or partly through the personality favor of the adolescent towards to the mother. Those results help us further understand the predictors of the parent-adolescent relation theoretically; they also help remind the education and psychology professionals the importance of the mediating effect of the personality favor between the personality match and the mother-adolescent communication, especially when the personalities of the mother and her child are unstable.

Key words: adolescent, mother, personality match, personality favor, mother-adolescent communication