They Love Me Not: A Meta-Analysis of Relations Between Parental Undifferentiated Rejection And Offspring’s Psychological Maladjustment:

Extensive cross-cultural evidence supports the conclusion that children and adults everywhere understand themselves to be cared about (accepted) or not cared about (rejected) by the people most important to them (e.g., parents) in four ways. These four ways include the perception of warmth/affection (or coldness/lack of affection), hostility/aggression, indifference/neglect, and undifferentiated rejection. In addition, extensive cross-cultural evidence supports the conclusion that psychological adjustment of children and adults everywhere tends to be affected in the same way when they feel their attachment figures do not care about or love them (i.e., reject them). About 11 prior meta-analyses have documented these conclusions about the relationship between psychological maladjustment and the experiences of parental coldness/lack of affection, hostility/aggression, and indifference/neglect, among offspring. However, the cross-cultural link between psychological maladjustment and undifferentiated rejection...