Poster #211 - Sharing and Being Shared Feelings: Relation to Empathy, Social Status, and Friendships

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Emotional socialization refers to the process by which social environment shapes children’s experience, expression, understanding, and regulation of emotion (Denham, 2007; Zahn-Waxler, 2010). For school-age children, peer groups serve as a primary social context for this. Specifically, sharing emotions with others is not only a key mechanism for emotion regulation (Rimé, 2009), but also provides personal and interpersonal benefits (Brans et al., 2014).

The goal of this study was to examine children’s emotion sharing in the peer group, their associations with emotional competence, and the quality of peer relationships. Regarding emotion sharing, we examined the extent to which 1) children share their feelings with peers and 2) children are chosen to be recipients of such sharing. We examined social status (i.e., likeability, rejection) and friendship patterns (i.e., incoming and outgoing friendships, reciprocated friendships) as indicators of peer relationship quality; and empathy as an indicator of emotional competence. We hypothesized that both sharing feelings, and being shared feelings with, would be positively associated with the target outcomes. We further hypothesized that being a recipient of sharing feelings is more strongly associated with some of the outcomes such as likeability and empathy.

Participants were 456 children ages 8-14 years (52% female, 48% male). Peer nominations, self-report, and teacher-report were used to assess the study constructs. First, peer nominations were used to assess the following: being shared feelings (who do you share your feelings with?), likeability (who do you like to play with the most?), and rejection (who do you like to play with the least?). The number of nominations each child received, standardized by class size, was used as an indicator of the respective characteristics. Second, self-report was used to assess sharing feelings (e.g., when I feel upset, I talk to friends about it; α = .83). In addition, children reported up to 8 peers whom they play, work, or hang out with frequently. This information was used to identify the following friendship characteristics: outgoing friendships (normalized number of friendship nominations made), incoming friendships (normalized number of friendship nominations received), and reciprocated friendships (proportion of friendship nominations reciprocated). Finally, teacher-report was used to assess empathy (e.g., shows kindness to others when they are upset; α = .94). See Table 1 for correlations among study variables.

Multiple regression analysis was conducted for each of the target outcome variables. Sharing feelings and being shared feelings with, in addition to demographic variables, were used as independent variables. Results are summarized in Table 2. Children who more frequently shared feelings with peers identified more peers as friends, were more often identified as friends by their peers, and were less rejected. Children who were a more frequent recipient of emotion sharing not only exhibited the aforementioned benefits, but also were perceived as more empathetic, better liked, and had more reciprocated friendships. Overall, children’s emotion sharing is associated with positive emotional and peer adjustment outcomes. Children who are sought out for emotion sharing seem particularly advanced in emotional competence and peer relationships.

Authors

• Kyongboon Kwon, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
  Presenting Author

• Cassandra Matejka, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
  Non-Presenting Author

• Bridget Brinckman, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
  Non-Presenting Author