Gender and Age Differences in Peer Nominations and Perceptions of Pride Regulation in Black Youth and Links to Social Acceptance

• In Event: 1-171 - Feeling, Flexibly: Flexibility in Child and Adolescent Emotion Regulation and Its Links with Psychosocial Functioning

Integrative Statement

Regulatory flexibility requires strategic expression of emotions to serve social goals, and may involve perceptions of group norms as well as peer perceptions of emotional expressivity. Research on the regulation of positive emotions, including pride, has increased (Jordan et al., 2011), but has largely neglected youth of color. Moreover, despite clear gender differences in emotion regulation patterns and their links to peer acceptance, there is a lack of understanding about group norms for expressing positive emotions (Underwood, 1997). The present study explored gender and age differences in perceptions of group norms for pride regulation among Black youth, as well as peer nominations of pride regulation and and associations with social acceptance.

Participants were 175 Black students (50.86% male, M=12.08 years, SD=2.17 years) from three public schools (one elementary and two middle schools). Participants completed a measure of perceptions about gender-typical patterns of pride inhibition, a two-item, unlimited nomination measure assessing perceptions of peers’ pride inhibition (i.e., suppressing pride expressions) and overt or exaggerated pride expressions, and a same-sex social acceptance rating.

Regressions examined age and gender effects on gender-typical patterns of pride inhibition, and peer-nominated pride inhibition and exaggeration. A second set examined associations between peer nominations of pride regulation, gender-typical patterns of pride inhibition, and same-sex social acceptance. Several significant gender and age differences existed (Table 1). Notably, age was associated with gender-typical ratings of pride inhibition, such that older youth believed that boys and girls their age have lower pride inhibition. Additionally, as age increased, peer nominations of pride inhibition increased, while nominations of exaggeration decreased. Moreover, girls were more likely to be nominated as having exaggerated pride expressions than their male peers. Pride inhibition nominations were positively associated with same-sex social acceptance for girls, but not for boys. Perceptions of gender-typical pride inhibition were unrelated to same-sex social acceptance.

These findings may be interpreted as Black youth having the flexibility to inhibit the expression of proud feelings, even if it might generally be perceived as normative for age-mates to overtly express pride. Of note, when providing gender-typical ratings, older youth tended to believe that peers had less inhibition, but when asked about specific peers in their classroom, inhibition nominations increased with age. Moreover, children’s beliefs about group norms for pride regulation were unrelated to social acceptance. Thus, while it appears that youth believe that it is typical to engage in more inhibition of pride as they age, this pattern was only observed in boys, not girls. Moreover, only female pride inhibition was associated with peer acceptance. Results with our sample of Black youth align with prior findings of increasing pride regulation among White youth as age increases (Webb et al., 2016). Our results would suggest that ability to strategically inhibit pride is particularly important for the social demands of female peer interactions, whereas boys’ social acceptance does not require socially-sensitive regulation of this positive emotion. Thus, gender may be an embedded marker within the construct of emotional flexibility that requires further examination.

Authors

• Lindsey Webb, Johns Hopkins University, School of Public Health
  Presenting Author

• Scott Paul Mirabile, St. Mary's College of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Carisa Parrish, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
  Non-Presenting Author