Emotion Socialization in China: The Influence of Culture on Beliefs, Emotion, and Behavior

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

In this symposium, we examine Chinese teachers’ and parents’ emotion socialization with children from early to middle childhood. By taking China as an example, our symposium highlights the need to go beyond the WEIRD population and recognize the role of culture in shaping how adults socialize emotion with children. Talk 1 will systematically review existing empirical studies on emotion suppression as a regulation strategy in Chinese kindergartens. By using a rigorous bilingual screening and data extraction process and including publications in both English and Chinese languages, this presentation will provide a uniquely comprehensive view of current empirical evidence regarding emotion suppression in the Chinese cultural context. Talk 2 addresses Chinese parents’ emotion-related beliefs and self-construals in relation to their emotion socialization responses to positive and negative emotions. Multivariate regression results showed nuanced interaction effects of beliefs and self-construals in relation to emotion socialization responses, suggesting the importance of culturally-relevant belief systems for emotion socialization processes in middle childhood. Adopting an innovative methodology that captures the bi-directional nature of socialization processes, Talk 3 assesses real-time mother-child interactions that occur in solving a challenging puzzle task. Chinese mothers’ autonomy support when children showed defeat predicted children’s greater socially competent behavior six months later, suggesting that autonomy support may promote emotion regulation during early childhood. Finally, an expert in Chinese-heritage cultures and emotion development in early to middle childhood will identify emerging themes of all three talks and discuss the implications these studies have for future research on emotion socialization and cultural psychology.

Sub Unit

• Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Chair

• ZHENLAN WANG, Yale University

Discussant

• Julie C Dunsmore, University of Houston

Individual Presentations

• Culture and the Socialization of Emotion: A Systematic Review on Emotion Suppression in Chinese kindergartens - Presenting Author: ZHENLAN WANG, Yale University; Danhua Zhu, University of California - Irvine; Craig S. Bailey, Yale School of Medicine; Songliang Li, Northeastern Normal University; Whitney Sanders; Fuzhe Xie, Yale University

• Emotion Socialization by Chinese Parents: Roles of Parents’ Beliefs about Emotions and Self-Construals - Presenting Author: Danhua Zhu, University of California - Irvine; Julie C Dunsmore, University of Houston

• Moment-to-Moment Within-Person Associations between Maternal Autonomy Support and Child Defeat Predicting Chinese Preschoolers’ Behavioral Adjustment - Presenting Author: Xi Chen, East China Normal University