A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Emotional Reactivity to Disappointment between Yucatec Maya and United States Youth

• In Event: Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Topic - Social, Emotional, Personality

Abstract

Emotion regulation techniques and expectations for when and how emotions should be expressed are foundational aspects of socioemotional development that tend to be socialized within adult-child interactions. In the United States, information about emotion is typically transmitted via explicit instruction (e.g., adults direct children’s attention, scaffold learning). Given the ubiquity of this form of parent-child socialization in the U.S., questions arise about the potential consequences (or benefits) in cultural contexts where explicit instruction is rare. The current study leverages data from children in the U.S. and from the Yucatec Maya, an indigenous community of Mexico where child-rearing is communal rather than dyadic and children’s learning is observational rather than explicitly instructed. Previous research indicates that Mayan children’s development across other domains is not delayed by less frequent explicit pedagogical interaction and suggests that a culture’s typical patterns of teaching shape how children best learn from and are socialized by others. Little research, however, has investigated Mayan children’s emotional functioning. Mayan and U.S. cultural expectations about emotional expression differ; Mayan adults are expected to control their expressions such that their mental state remains uninterpretable by just observing their behavior. To explore the implications that observational learning may have for socioemotional development, the current study will describe and compare patterns of physiological and emotional reactivity during a structured disappointment task among Yucatec Maya and U.S. children.

Data were collected from 30 Maya children in a remote village in Yucatan, Mexico, from two age groups: 6- and 10-year-olds. A matched sample of 30 same-age, same-sex participants was drawn from an existing dataset of children from Southern California, USA. Both samples completed a structured disappointment task in which they expected to receive a desired prize but were instead “accidentally” given an unfavored one and left alone with it for one minute. Video recordings of this episode will be globally coded for the degree of behavioral distress expressed and cardiac physiological signals recorded throughout the episode (PEP to index sympathetic; RSA for parasympathetic) will be scored and compiled following typical lab procedures.

We hypothesize no significant differences in Maya and U.S. children’s physiological reactivity, as children in both cultures will experience disappointment upon receiving the undesired prize. However, we hypothesize differences in emotional expression, such that U.S. children will exhibit increased emotional distress compared to Maya children. We expect this difference to be more pronounced among the older age group such that 10-year-old Mayan children will exhibit the least distress of any group. We will analyze data using ANOVA to examine the effects of age and culture on each of three dependent variables (behavioral distress, RSA, PEP). With data collection complete, Fall 2020 will consist of scoring and coding data. Winter 2020 will focus on analyses, all of which will be completed by the April 2021 meeting.

This study marks an important foray into the exploration of relationships between pedagogical practices and emotional functioning among the Yucatec Maya and, more broadly, cultures in which explicit instruction is not the norm.

Authors

• Shannon M Brady, University of California - Riverside
  Presenting Author

• Laura Shneidman
  Non-Presenting Author

• Cornelio Azarias Chay Cano, Colegio de posgraduados (COLPOS)
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elizabeth L Davis, University of California - Riverside
  Non-Presenting Author