Childhood Emotion Socialization and Adolescent Adjustment: Indirect Effects through Emotion Regulation

• In Event: 2-058 - Emotion Socialization: Past, Present, and Future

Integrative Statement

Eisenberg and colleagues (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998) put forth a theoretical process model describing the way in which parental emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs) may be associated with social and behavioral adjustment through their impact on children’s ability to regulate their arousal. In the current study (n=443), we utilized observational, physiological, and questionnaire (i.e., child self-report, teacher report, mother report) methodology to empirically test multiple components of Eisenberg’s model across a 10- year period from early childhood through adolescence. Specifically, we assessed whether mothers’ reports of their supportive and non-supportive reactions to their children’s negative emotions at age 5 were associated with physiological and behavioral emotion regulation (observed and reported) at age 10. We also assessed whether children’s emotion regulation at age 10 was associated with adolescent self-reported and teacher-reported behavioral and social adjustment at age 15. Next, and at the core of the model put forth by Eisenberg and colleagues, we tested whether ERSBs during early childhood were indirectly associated with adjustment in adolescence through their impact on children’s ability to regulate negative emotions. Finally, because Eisenberg and colleagues suggested that child characteristics such as sex may moderate these pathways, we conducted a multigroup analysis to test whether the model differed for boy and girls.
Analyses were conducted in Mplus (Muthen & Muthen, 2017) and FIML was used to handle missing data. The multigroup analysis revealed that the model was invariant across child sex. Thus, boys and girls were included in the same model and sex was included as a covariate. Model results are shown in Figure 1. Table 1 depicts the significant indirect effects supporting Eisenberg’s original process model. For example, maternal non-supportive reactions to negative emotions at age 5 were associated with adolescent’s friendship quality and self-reliance at age 15 through their association with greater physiological regulation during a frustration task at age 10. Maternal supportive reactions to negative emotions were associated with problems in school at age 15 through their association with reported and observed behavioral dysregulation at age 10. Overall, the current study provides empirical support for the theoretical process model proposed by Eisenberg and colleagues and suggests that parents reactions to their children’s negative emotions may have an impact on children’s ability to regulate their arousal both physiologically and behaviorally which, in turn, may play a role in their ability to manage their emotions and behavior and navigate increasingly complex social contexts into adolescence.

Authors

• Nicole Perry, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
  Presenting Author

• Jessica Dollar, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan Calkins, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan Phillips Keane, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Non-Presenting Author