Poster #213 - Parental Low Negative Expressivity and Ignoring Children’s Negative Emotions: Implications for Children’s Emotion Regulation

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Parents’ emotion socialization efforts include active approaches such as discussing and responding to children’s emotions and passive behaviors such as modeling emotional expressivity and regulation (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998; Klimes-Dougan & Zeman, 2007; Morris et al., 2002). Although ignoring responses to children’s emotions have received relatively little empirical attention, we know they are common (Ahn & Stifter, 2006; Denham & Kochanoff, 2002) and may contribute to child internalizing and externalizing behaviors (O’Neal & Magai, 2005). Moderate levels of parent negative emotional expressivity likely help children understand emotions (Eisenberg et al., 1998) and promote prosocial behavior (Michalik et al., 2007); parents who are unable to model such moderated negative expressivity may compromise children’s developing emotion regulation skills (Morelen, Shaffer, & Suveg, 2014). Whereas copious research has examined the consequences of excessive parental negative emotionality (e.g., Denham et al., 1994; Fabes et al., 2002; Halberstadt, Crisp, & Eaton, 1999), relatively little work has examined the consequences of very low parental negative emotionality (e.g., Morelen et al., 2014). In keeping with Eisenberg and colleagues’ (1998) multi-faceted conception of emotion socialization and in response to clear calls for explorations of interactions between emotion socialization domains (e.g., Halberstadt, 1998), this study examined both main and interactive effects of parent ignoring responses to children’s negative emotions and parents’ own low negative expressivity on children’s emotion regulation, internalizing, and externalizing.

Parents (n = 81, mean age = 34.8 years, 90% female) of 3-6 year old children (mean age = 4.5 years, 43 female) reported on their use of ignoring responses via a modified version of the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (Fabes, Eisenberg, & Bernzweig, 1990; Mirabile, 2015) and on their own negative expressivity (Self Expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire; Halberstadt, Cassidy, Stifter, Parke, & Fox, 1995). Parents also reported on children’s emotion regulation (Emotion Regulation Skills Questionnaire; Mirabile, 2014) and internalizing and externalizing (Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000).

Concerning main effects, only low negative expressivity explained variance in child maladaptive emotion regulation, internalizing, and externalizing (See Table 1). As parent negative expressivity decreased, so too did child maladaptive emotion regulation, externalizing, and internalizing. Importantly, the interaction between parent ignoring and low negative expressivity explained additional variance in children’s maladaptive emotion regulation. At high levels of ignoring, the relationship between low negative expressivity and child maladaptive emotion regulation weakens and is no longer statistically significant. At low levels of ignoring, the negative relationship between parent low negative expressivity and child maladaptive emotion regulation strengthens (See Figure 1). These results suggest that the potentially beneficial effect of parent low negative expressivity is weakened when paired with high parental ignoring. Interestingly, the interaction of parents’ ignoring responses and restricted negative affect suggests the possibility of a suppression-focused meta-emotion philosophy, an idea suggested by previous theorists (Halberstadt, 1998) but currently lacking strong empirical support (Mitmansgruber et al., 2009). In sum, these findings demonstrate the value of a multi-faceted approach to emotion socialization that recognizes the potential for interactive effects between socialization domains.

Authors

• Benjamin Ertman, St. Mary's College of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Scott Paul Mirabile, St. Mary's College of Maryland
  Presenting Author