Effects of Emotion Socialization Models on Maternal Regulation Strategies and Toddler’s Affect in India

• In Event: Emotion Regulation Between 2 and 6 Years – Behavioral Dynamics and Developmental Correlates

Abstract

Mothers’ vicarious regulatory behaviors towards their children are guided by their socialization goals that are embedded within their cultural context (Friedlmeier et al., 2019; Keller et al. 2005). The aim of the study was to investigate the effect of emotion socialization goals on maternal regulation strategies and toddler’s affect in India.
We expected that mothers with individualistic goals will endorse less control strategies than mothers with relational goals. As compliance is an important feature in Indian socialization (Saraswathi & Ganapathy, 2002), we expected that mothers’ positive control may be related to less negative affect of the child, especially for mothers with relational socialization goals. Distraction is effective to downregulate child’s negative emotion (Mirabile et al. 2009) and we expected similar effects for both group of mothers in India (Friedlmeier et al. 2019). Though results for verbal and physical comforting are mixed in prior studies, we expected that these strategies may increase negative affect in the short term.
Fifty mother-toddler dyads (44 % girls, Mage = 26.64 months) from Vadodara, India were observed in a waiting task. Maternal regulatory strategies (i.e., distraction, verbal and physical warmth, positive, negative, and task-oriented control) were coded for their presence versus absence in 5 second intervals leading to 48 epochs. Toddlers’ emotions (i.e., anger, sadness and happiness) were coded on a 4-point scale for frequency and intensity in each interval. The emotion socialization goals were assessed with the 20-item measure by Chan et al. (2006) that measures individualistic and relational emotion goals.
On average, Indian mothers endorsed relational emotion socialization goals significantly more than individualistic. Nevertheless, some Indian mothers valued individualistic goals higher compared to relational goals. Regarding regulatory strategies, the mothers did only differ in task-oriented strategies: mothers with relational goals displayed such restrictive behavior significantly more often than mothers with individualistic goals. Overall, positive control led to decrease of child’s negative emotion for both groups of mothers and - in contrast to our expectations - distraction was not effective. Preliminary results of the regression analyses showed some moderation effect by mothers’ socialization goals. For example, physical warmth was related to higher intensity of toddlers’ negative expression but only for mothers with low relational goals. Similar results occurred for negative control. The relation between mothers’ verbal warmth and child’s negative emotion was also higher for mothers with low relational goals.
The current results in part confirm the expectation that regulatory control strategies aimed at child’s emotion regulation partly show different effects in dyads depending on mothers’ emotion socialization goals. However, the moderation effects by the goal orientation were not as strong as expected. It is possible that other cultural norms or other dyad-specific characteristics (e.g., child temperament) overwrite such differences. Furthermore, most Indian mothers showed balanced endorsement and that could be another reason that led to rather similar patterns. The results will be further discussed in the light of the Indian context and the broader theoretical framework of emotion socialization.

Authors

• Tripti Kathuria, N/A
  Presenting Author

• Shagufa Kapadia, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda

• Wolfgang Josef Friedlmeier, Grand Valley State University