Parents’ Beliefs about Emotions and Emotion Socialization Behaviors in Turkey and the United States

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

Abstract

Parental emotion socialization (ES) plays a critical role in children’s socioemotional competence. Nonetheless, there remains a need for cross-cultural research on ES to illuminate similarities and differences in parents’ ES practices and potential influences on ES practices, such as emotion-related beliefs (Eisenberg, 2020; Raval & Walker, 2019). We worked with families from Turkey (a culture higher in collectivism and uncertainty avoidance) and the United States (US; a culture higher in individualism and lower in uncertainty avoidance; Hofstede Insights, 2022) with children in early childhood, a time when foundational emotion understanding and emotion regulation skills are developing (Saarni, 1999). We focused on two emotion-related beliefs – autonomy (children can manage emotions on their own) and parental knowledge (parents need to know children’s emotions; Halberstadt et al., 2013). Consistent with recent advocacy for the importance of positive emotions in development (Yi et al., 2016), we measured parental ES of both positive and negative emotions.
Participants were 105 parents (80% mothers, 20% fathers in each country) with their 4- to 5-year-old child (Mage = 4.44 years, SD = .50) from Turkey (n = 50; 52% girls, 48% boys) and the US (n = 55; 56% girls, 44% boys). US children were White (80%), multiracial (11%), Black (4%), or from other racial groups (4%); 7% were Hispanic/Latinx. Parents’ supportive and nonsupportive ES behaviors regarding children’s positive and negative emotions were observed during a parent-child emotion discourse task (coding manual adapted from Dunsmore et al., 2013; ICC range = .57–.94). Parents completed questionnaires in their native language to self-report supportive and nonsupportive ES responses to children’s positive (Parental Reactions to Children’s Positive Emotions Scale; Ladouceur et al., 2002, Turkish version Kılıç & Kumandaş-Öztürk, 2019) and negative emotions (Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale; Fabes et al., 1990, Turkish version Yagmurlu & Altan, 2010). Parents also completed the Parents’ Beliefs about Children’s Emotions scale in their native language (Halberstadt et al., 2013; Turkish version Kılıç & Kumandaş, 2017). Internal consistency was good across both samples for all scales used in analyses (αs > .85).
We conducted a multivariate regression to examine effects of culture (between-subjects: Turkey, US), beliefs (between-subjects: autonomy, parental knowledge), ES measure (within-subjects: questionnaire, observation), ES type (within-subjects: supportive, nonsupportive), and emotion valence (within-subjects: positive, negative) on parents’ ES responses. Child gender was covaried. See Table 1. We describe two findings here. Culture interacted with emotion valence and ES type. Across measures, Turkish parents were more supportive and less nonsupportive of children’s positive emotions, and less supportive of children’s negative emotions, compared with US parents. Culture also interacted with emotion valence and parental knowledge. See Figure 1. Effects of parental knowledge on ES of positive emotions were small. Turkish parents engaged in more ES of negative emotions when they more strongly endorsed belief in parental knowledge whereas US parents engaged in less ES of negative emotions when they more strongly endorsed belief in parental knowledge. Full results will be discussed in relation to meaning of positive and negative emotions within sociocultural contexts.

Authors

• Danhua Zhu, University of California - Irvine
  Presenting Author

• Şükran Kılıç, AKSARAY UNIVERSITY

• Erika Hernandez, BInghamton University

• Julie C Dunsmore, University of Houston