Emotional Responding to Ambiguous Social Threat: When do Children Make Challenge Versus Threat Appraisals?

• In Event: Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Topic - Social, Emotional, Personality

Abstract

People commonly experience situations where it is unclear what will happen. In childhood, these ambiguous situations take myriad forms, such as starting school or interacting with unfamiliar adults. Ambiguity, especially in social situations, is often perceived as threatening because the outcome is unknown. Cognitive appraisals, both of the threat-relevance of the ambiguous situation and of one’s own ability to manage the emotions that arise from feeling threatened, are a crucial but understudied piece of children’s emotional reactions. For instance, if a child feels she has the self-regulatory resources to handle an ambiguous situation, she will respond as though it is a challenge, with behaviors designed to overcome; if a child appraises that they do not have the requisite resources to handle it, they will respond with fear (Lazarus, 1991). The goal of this study is to examine how children respond to an ambiguous social situation to identify a pattern of behavioral responding that indexes different appraisals (i.e., challenge versus threat). Hypotheses: 1.) More children will appraise an ambiguous context to be a challenge they can surmount than a threat they can do nothing about. 2.) More older children will appraise the ambiguous context as a challenge than younger children. 3.) More girls will appraise the ambiguous context as a challenge than boys.
A diverse sample of 181 children, ages 3 -11 (M = 7.21 years, SD = 2.30; 52% female), were recruited from Southern California. In the lab, children encountered an unfamiliar female adult wearing a black hoodie and a costume mask. The experimenter did not move or speak for 15s, then said “Hi, my name is Jamie,” in a neutral tone. After another 15s Jamie took a step toward the child, remained silent for 15s, removed the mask, and invited the child to examine it. To investigate children’s behavioral reactions to this ambiguous social situation, video recordings will be transcribed, and the child’s behavior will be coded. Recordings will be reliably interval-coded for proximity-based behavior (approach/withdrawal) and multiple indices of emotional responding, including distress and vocalizations (e.g., social bids for Jamie to interact with them, statements of feeling/not feeling afraid, nervous laughter). The pattern of observed behaviors will be used to characterize primary (e.g., “is this a threat?”) and subsequent secondary (e.g., “do I have the resources to manage this?”) appraisals.
Planned Data Analysis: Descriptive and correlational analyses will be used to examine associations among coded behavior and child characteristics. The pattern of emotional responding derived from the behavioral coding will be used to categorize the types of appraisals children are making (challenge/threat). Chi-square and t-tests will examine appraisal type in conjunction with child gender, age, and other child characteristics.
This work can feasibly be finished in the next few months. Data collection is complete and behavioral coding will take place in Fall 2020. Data analysis will be completed in Winter 2020. This will be one of the very first developmental investigations of challenge and threat appraisals of ambiguous social threats in childhood.

Authors

• Kasey N Pankratz, University of California - Riverside
  Presenting Author

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