Poster #207 - Maternal emotion socialization: Goals versus behaviors

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Parents influence the development of children’s emotion regulation directly and indirectly (Meyer et al., 2014). The beliefs parents hold about emotions have wide-reaching consequences — from influencing the way in which they label and define emotions, to the significance they give to regulating specific emotions, and finally to how they model emotion expression and regulation to their children (Mirabile, 2014). Little work has explored how maternal reactions to children’s emotions vary between self-report versus observational measures, nor are the maternal processes that regulate positive emotional experience well understood (Gentzler, Ramsey, & Black, 2015).
As part of a longitudinal study, 779 infants were behaviorally screened at 4 months of age, with 291 infants (48% males) selected based on their temperamental reactivity to novelty: high negative/high motor reactive (36%); high positive/high motor reactive (35%); average reactive (29%); and high negative/high positive reactive (8%). Selected participants were invited to the lab at 9, 24, 36, 48, 60 months, and 7 years of age. High and Low Exuberance profiles were created through latent profile analysis, including behavioral measures of positive reactivity (4 months), positive approach (9 months), and positivity, approach, and sociability (24 and 36 months; Degnan et al., 2011).
Maternal emotion socialization was assessed through the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES; Fabes et al., 2002) when children were 7 years of age. The questionnaire presents parents with 12 vignettes that involve children’s negative emotions and asks them to rate the likelihood of responding in six particular ways. The responses relate to six sub-scales which collapse across vignettes into “supportive (expressive encouragement, emotion-focused, and problem-focused sub-scales) and “unsupportive” reactions (punitive, minimizing, and distress sub-scales).
Parents and children discussed five emotional events when children were 7 years of age (e.g. Reese, Haden, & Fivush, 1993). Parents were instructed to talk with their child about events when the child had experienced each emotion/situation (problem with peer, angry, scared, and happy), as well as one hypothetical peer rejection scenario. The conversations were coded for negative and positive emotionality, expansion, minimization, rejection/correction, confirmation/validation, and clarification.
Analyses using a subsample revealed that mothers’ supportive reactions were significantly related to greater observed requests for clarification: expressive encouragement, r = .37, 7p = .003; emotion-focused reactions, r = .27, p = .035; problem-focused reactions, r = .34, p = .008. Mothers’ distress reactions were significantly related to greater observed positive minimization, r = .26, p = .043. Mothers’ punitive reactions were significantly related to less observed general positivity, r = -.27, p = .033. Mothers’ minimization was significantly related to less neutral expansion by children, r = -.27, p = .033. Expressive encouragement was significantly related to children’s positive minimization, r = .28, p = .028. Additional analyses on the full sample will explore the role of emotional event type (e.g. happy versus angry) in these patterns.

Authors

• Genessey Robyn Flint, Catholic University of America
  Presenting Author

• Kathryn A. Degnan, Catholic University of America
  Non-Presenting Author