Inter and Intracultural Effects of Emotion Socialization Goals on Maternal Strategies and Toddler’s Negative Emotions

• In Event: Parental Emotion Socialization Around the World: A Close Look at Culturally Embedded Guiding Factors

Abstract

Maternal regulatory strategies towards young children’s emotions is guided by cultural norms that are widely shared. However, such norms are not uniformly embraced, especially in cultures with strong modernization tendencies where mothers face a broader choice of norms that can vary from traditional to more newly adopted norms. The main goal of this study was to investigate whether mothers’ emotion goal preference (individualistic versus relational) explains their emotion regulatory practices in interaction with their toddler. We choose India and Turkey, two countries that are going through modernization processes.
Based on prior studies, we expected that mothers who endorse relational goals may display more control strategies and more physical warmth to regulate their child’s negative emotion. Indian and Turkish mothers may display more control behavior as compliance is part of social training in relatedness cultures (Keller, 2003). We also expected that the control strategies by these mothers may increase the child’s negative emotion less compared to mothers endorsing individualistic goals. We expected that maternal distraction may decrease negative affect in a contingent way.
Mother-toddler dyads in Turkey and India (N = 100) were observed in a delay of gratification task. Maternal regulatory attempts were coded in 5-s intervals across the 4-minute delay task. Six categories were coded: distraction, physical warmth, verbal warmth, positive, negative, and task-appropriate control. Toddlers’ emotion expressions were coded for frequency and intensity for the same intervals. The emotion socialization goals were assessed with the 20-item measure by Chan, Bowes, and Wyver (2006) that measures individualistic and relational emotion goals. Temperament was assessed with the Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire (Putnam & Rothbart, 2006). The contingency analyses were carried out with Hierarchical Linear Modeling (Bryk & Raudenbush, 2002) by analyzing the relation of maternal strategies on child’s change of negative emotion at level 1 and including the two emotion socialization goals at level 2.
Indian mothers endorsed relational goals more strongly than Turkish mothers and Turkish mothers displayed more physical warmth and positive control than Indian mothers. Preliminary results of contingency analyses point to some variations due to different goal orientations for Turkish mothers but less for Indian mothers. For example, Turkish mothers endorsing individualistic goals used distraction in a more effective way, i.e., it led to a stronger decrease of child’s negative emotion in a contingent way. They also displayed less verbal warmth when their child’s emotion expression was strong whereas Turkish mothers with relational goals displayed more verbal warmth when children showed strong emotion expression. The socialization goal effects for positive control strategies were similar.
The results will be discussed by referring to a cultural framework of regulatory practices and how socialization goals are relevant transmitters between culture and the cultural learning of emotion regulation by young children.

Authors

• Wolfgang Josef Friedlmeier, Grand Valley State University
  Presenting Author

• Tripti Kathuria, N/A

• Feyza Corapci, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi (BOUN)