Contextualizing Minimizing Forms of Cognitive Reappraisal: Is Telling Kids, “It’s Not a Big Deal,” a Big Deal?

• In Event: Examining Cognitive Reappraisal in Development: The Role of Parents

Abstract

Cognitive reappraisal refers to emotion regulation (ER) strategies that enable someone to think differently about an emotional experience by “reframing” what it means. For example, minimizing reappraisals involve downplaying a negative experience (or its consequences) as “not a big deal,” and are typically effective in reducing negative emotion. However, developmental science has consistently documented that parents’ use of minimizing in response to children’s expressed negative emotion predicts poorer socioemotional competence (Eisenberg et al., 1998). This disparate view of minimizing as beneficial in the affective science realm but detrimental in developmental science introduces an intriguing question: Is minimizing supportive (i.e., enabling children’s ER), non-supportive (i.e., undermining children’s emotional competence), or does the meaning and effect of minimizing depend on context? Previous work has suggested that parents with greater ER resources (including dispositional use of cognitive reappraisal) provide more direct reappraisal coaching and instruction to their upset children (Shih et al., 2017). Extending this logic, parents who have difficulty regulating their own emotions may rely too heavily on cognitive strategies like minimizing that interrupt, abbreviate, or diminish an unfolding emotional reaction. The goal of this study was to explore this possibility and further contextualize the utility and implications of parents’ minimizing ER strategies.

Participants were a diverse (~35% Hispanic, ~ 30% White, ~10% African American, ~10% multi-racial, 15% other races) sample of 181 4-to-11-year-old children (52% girls, Mage = 7.19, SD = 2.28) and one parent (85% mothers). Parents completed the 36-item self-report Difficulties with Emotion Regulation Scale (Gratz & Roemer, 2004). Dispositional use of emotion management strategies in the context of interactions with their distressed child was measured by the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (Fabes et al., 1990), which describes 12 emotionally challenging situations that children frequently experience. Parents indicated the likelihood of their supportive (e.g., problem-focused,) and non-supportive (e.g., minimizing) reactions. Observed parent provision of ER strategies to upset children was coded from a structured in-lab disappointment task in which children received an undesirable prize instead of a favored one. Multiple behaviors, including expressed distress and spontaneous parent suggestions for how children could manage their disappointment, were coded offline.

Initial analyses revealed that parental difficulty with ER was related to both dispositional use and situational provision of unsupportive (as expected) and supportive (counter to our expectations) ER strategies. Overall difficulties with ER related to parents’ tendency to use minimizing in response to children’s emotion (r = 0.148, p = 0.05). Additionally, parental dispositional minimizing was positively related to observed use of problem-focused reactions during the disappointment task (r = 0.146, p = 0.05), but not observed use of minimizing (r = 0.09, p = 0.24). These correlations held only for children older than 8, and were non-significant for younger children. Therefore, parents with ER difficulty could preferentially be using both minimizing and problem-solving as strategies that abbreviate or diminish their own and other people’s (e.g., their child’s) emotional reactions. Subsequent analyses will investigate relations between parental minimizing and children’s knowledge and successful use of ER strategies.

Authors

• Laura Deloretta, University of California - Riverside
  Presenting Author

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