Children’s Social Support Seeking Behavior Varies by Emotion Context and Social Partner

• In Event: Social Relationships in Preschool and Primary School

Abstract

Research has shown that individuals frequently pursue interpersonal resources, like soliciting social support from loved ones, to help them manage emotions in response to a variety of events (Gross, 2002; Williams et al., 2018). While prior work has considered the broad use of social support to buffer stress and the role of parents in providing social support for children (Jackson & Warren, 2003; McLoyd & Wilson, 1990), the specific format of the social support and the contexts in which it occurs have received less attention. Research into the specific forms of children’s social support behaviors (seeking, providing, receiving, and imagining) would inform our understanding of how interpersonal emotion regulation processes develop across different contexts. In this study, we examined the relationship between children’s experiences with support and who the target social partner was (e.g., friend, family, teacher, pet) in different emotional contexts, to better describe children’s use of social support behaviors.

181 children (Mage = 7.69 years, SD = 2.28, 50% girls) participated. The sample was diverse: 32.4% Mixed Race/Ethnicity, 29.4% Hispanic, 18.2% Caucasian, 10.7% African American, 1.6% Asian American, 4% Other. Children were interviewed about their autobiographical experiences of anger, sadness, and fear, and subsequently asked to describe their use of emotion regulation strategies in each of these contexts. Social support behaviors were coded from children’s responses as either present or absent in each emotion context: seeking (e.g., I played with my friend so I didn’t feel sad), providing (e.g., I gave my toy to him because he was scared), receiving without asking (e.g., My grandma brought me my toy and I wasn’t mad anymore), and imagining (e.g., I pretended my puppy was with me). Most (55%) children reported using social support strategies at least once across the three negative emotion contexts. With increasing age, social support behaviors were used more frequently, but only in the sad emotion context [anger r = .008, p = .916; sadness r = .191, p = .01; fear r = 0.44, p = .55]. Additionally, the type of social support behaviors children described using related to age: seeking social support was positively associated with age but no other age-related differences were found [sought r = .154, p = .038; provided r = .044, p = .553; imagined r = 0.131, p = .079; received r = -.112, p = .124]. Of children who described seeking social support, this was typically from family (63%) or friends (18%). Additional analyses will examine differences in age, gender, socioeconomic status, emotional context, and social partners to understand how negatively valenced events influence children’s variations in target social partners and forms of social support behaviors.

In summary, age-related differences in children’s use of social support strategies appear to be dependent on emotional context. More specifically, older children are seeking out friends and family as supportive resources when experiencing sad events. Findings from this project will contribute to broadening our conceptualization of social support to align with contemporary frameworks of interpersonal emotion regulation as it relates to children

Authors

• Alisha Conover, University of California - Riverside
  Presenting Author

• Elizabeth L Davis, University of California - Riverside