Cultural Differences in Positive Emotion Regulation from Chinese American and Mexican American Preschoolers

• In Event: Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Topic - Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Abstract

Positive emotion regulation has critical implications for social competence (Eisenberg et al., 2001) and psychopathology (Vogel et al., 2019). Display of positive emotion during rewarding experiences and high levels of engagement are considered important regulatory skills for positive emotion, as they initiate and maintain positive emotion (Izard et al., 2002). However, affect valuation theory postulates that variation in cultural norms and values influence ideal positive states (Tsai et al., 2006). Some studies suggest cultural differences in emotion expression consistent with ideal affect (high-arousal positive emotion vs. low-arousal positive emotion; Ruby et al., 2012). While previous studies focused on adults, little is known about how positive emotion expression in early childhood emerge as a result of socialization with respect to ideal affect in children of non-Western culture groups.
To address such gap, positive emotion regulation among preschoolers from two non-Western cultural groups matched on the income level were examined. Based on previous studies that assessed cultural differences in facial emotion expressions between Chinese American (CA) and Mexican American (MA) college students (Soto et al., 2005), it was hypothesized that MA children will display higher intensity of positive emotions than CA children as well as higher level of engagement.
The sample consisted of 44 CA and 46 MA children (age = 3.2-5.8, 59% girls, 63.6% 2nd generation, 36.4% 1st generation) recruited from Head Start Programs in the San Francisco Bay Area. As part of a larger study examining socioemotional and language development of preschool children from immigrant families, Popping Bubbles from the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Goldsmith et al., 1993) was administered in the children’s dominant language to measure children’s emotion expression (positive, negative) and engagement (physical involvement and regulatory behaviors such as looking at bubbles, looking at experimenter, looking at others, language use). Trained observers rated children’s emotion expression and physical involvement from 1 (no observed emotion) to 4 (intense and prolonged emotion) at each 5-second interval and regulation binarily (0 for absence and 1 for presence) for each 10-second epoch using previously validated coding scheme (Spinrad & Eisenberg, 2007). Inter-rater reliabilities measured using intraclass correlation coefficient were between .82-.99.
One-way ANOVAs were conducted to examine group-level differences in emotion expression and engagement (Table 1). As hypothesized, MA children displayed significantly higher intensity of positive emotions. However, different patterns appeared in the engagement behaviors, where CA children displayed behaviors related to attentional control more frequently than MA children while physical involvement was lower than MA children. Meanwhile, MA children also displayed more verbal behaviors than CA children. The findings advocate cultural differences in ideal affect appearing as young as age three, such that CA children displayed low arousal positive emotion as compared to MA children displaying high arousal positive emotion. Furthermore, different patterns of engagement behaviors exhibited match onto cultural valuation of ideal affect, where CA children regulate positive emotion through low arousal behaviors reflecting inhibition and emotional control (Chen, 2018) while MA children use high arousal regulatory behaviors reflecting open expression of emotion (Ramírez-Esparza et al., 2008).

Authors

• Yeunjoo Kim, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
  Presenting Author

• Aya Williams, University of California - Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author

• Qing Zhou, University of California - Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author