Racialized emotion socialization: An investigation among African American families

• In Event: 1-006 - Race, ethnicity, and emotion socialization: Findings from Latino, African American, and Chinese-immigrant families

Integrative Statement

Eisenberg, Cumberland, and Spinrad’s (1998a) heuristic model of the socialization of emotion and its revision (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998b) emphasized four emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs): parental reactions to children’s emotions, parental discussion of emotion, parental expression of emotion, and selection/modification of situations. Although, the review of these parental ERSBs facilitated a proliferation of research on parent predictors and child outcomes of parental ERSBs across developmental periods and cultural groups, a gap remains in identifying unique ERSBs that reflect the diverse sociocultural contexts that some families must navigate. A previous quantitative study identified the context dependence of emotion socialization behaviors among African American families across general and racialized emotion-eliciting situations (Lozada & Riley, 2018). Specifically, African American parents of middle school students endorsed problem focused and expressive encouragement responses more and punitive and minimizing responses less when the scenario was racialized (e.g., racial discrimination, racial teasing, tokenism) in comparison to scenarios of everyday negative emotion. Further, parents endorsed emotion focused responses less and distress responses more in racialized scenarios than in everyday scenarios.

The current study further expands Eisenberg et al.’s (1998a; 1998b) heuristic model by investigating the presence of African American parents’ racialized ERSBs and guiding racialized emotion-related beliefs in the socialization of African American adolescents’ emotional competence. African American parents were interviewed with a modified Meta-Emotion Interview (Gottman, Katz, & Hooven, 1996). Coding and thematic analysis of interview data from a sample of African American parents (n = 50; 96% mothers) from a larger longitudinal study demonstrate the four ERSBs emphasized in the revised heuristic model (Eisenberg et al., 1998b) in parents’ discussion of teaching their adolescents about emotions as African Americans (see Table 1): (1) racialized parental reactions to children’s emotions; (2) racialized parental discussion of emotion; (3) racialized parental emotion expression; and (4) racialized selection/modification of situations. However, additional culturally-relevant ERSBs were also discussed: identity-focused strategies and storytelling. Additionally, several racialized emotion-related beliefs were identified (see Table 1): emotion as vulnerability, emotion transcends race, emotion egalitarianism, stereotypes/misunderstanding of African American emotion, and emotion masking/suppression as protection.

Results from this study provide some basis of the application of Eisenberg and colleagues’ model to the sociocultural context of race and provides a starting point for the incorporation of racialized beliefs and experiences into models of emotion socialization. These findings will be discussed in terms of a model of racialized pathways of emotional development for ethnic-racial minority youth. Future directions will be discussed with regard to the development of emotion socialization measurement that includes racialized beliefs and experiences.

Authors

• Fantasy Lozada, Virginia Commonwealth University
  Presenting Author

• Tennisha N Riley, Indiana University
  Non-Presenting Author