Poster #99 - Evidence for Parental Biases when Reporting Their Children’s Worry

• In Event: Poster Session 10

Abstract

Previous research has found that parents, even those in non-clinical community samples, have difficulty evaluating their children’s emotions. For example, Lagattuta et al. (2012) found that parents perceive their children to worry less frequently than what their children self-report, suggesting that parents may have a positivity bias (i.e., tendency to view their child more favorably). Moreover, parents’ own worry correlated significantly with how they reported their children’s worry indicating an egocentric bias (i.e., difficulty separating their own emotions from their child’s emotions).
Here, we aimed to replicate these findings six years later with a new, non-clinical sample of parents and 4- to 10-year-olds. More specifically, the current work addressed: (1) Can 4- to 10-year-olds reliably report their worries? (2) Do parent perspectives of their children’s worry correlate with child self-reports? (3) Do parents show evidence of a positivity bias? (4) Do parents show evidence of an egocentric bias? These questions are of theoretical and empirical importance as developmental researchers typically rely on parent reports in children under 8 years of age and parents are essential to helping children receive mental health services.
Four- to 10-year-olds (N=157) reported the frequency that they experienced emotions and thoughts reflective of worry (e.g., “I think about bad or scary things”) using a 5-point pictorial scale ranging from 0 (none of the time) to 4 (all of the time). Parents predicted how their child would respond to the same items (e.g., “My child thinks about bad or scary things”). A subset of parents (N=132) completed the same measure to report their own worry (e.g., “I think about bad or scary things”). All reports were scored for average frequency rating.
Results showed high internal consistency in children’s and parents’ responses (.84<< .87), indicating that children as young as 4 years old can reliably self-report their worry. Although parent reports of their 8- to 10-year-olds’ worry and children’s self-reports correlated (r>.59, p<.001), parent reports of 4- to 7-year-olds had no relation to child self-reports (ps>.279).
To examine if parents show a positivity bias, we ran a 3 (Age Group: 4/5 years, 6/7 years, 8/10 years) x 2 (Reporter: parent report of child, child self-report) repeated measures ANOVA. Replicating previous findings, this resulted in a main effect for Reporter, F=4.78, p=.030, p2=.031, with parents perceiving their children to experience less worry than children self-report (Figure 1).
Replicating evidence for an egocentric bias, parents’ self-report of their own worry correlated with how they reported their children’s emotions at all age groups (rs>.40, ps<.01), suggesting that parents use their own emotions as an anchor with which to judge their children’s emotions. As further evidence, a 3 (Age Group) x 2 (Target: parent self-report, parent report of child) repeated measures ANOVA resulted in no main effects or interactions, revealing that parents provided nearly identical ratings for themselves and for their child (Figure 2).
These findings demonstrate how challenging it is for a parent to take their child’s emotional perspective, with implications for research and access to mental health services.

Authors

• Maritza Miramontes, University of California - Davis
  Presenting Author

• Roella Louise Pineda, University of California, Davis

• Hannah Jean Kramer, Queen’s University Belfast

• Karen Hjortsvang Lara, Southwestern University

• Kristin Hansen Lagattuta, University of California - Davis