Chinese Parents’ Emotion-Related Beliefs and Socialization Responses: A Person-Centered Approach

• In Event: Unfolding Emotion Socialization in Chinese-Heritage Families

Abstract

Emotion socialization involves the interrelation between socializers’ ideas and actions. Parents’ emotion-related beliefs may connect in varied ways to their supportive and or non-supportive reactions to children’s emotions. Literature on emotion socialization typically uses a variable-centered approach. However, person-centered approaches may illuminate how emotion socialization beliefs and behaviors interconnect holistically within individuals. Furthermore, it is important to examine how variation in endorsement of cultural values may relate to diverse patterns of emotion socialization within cultures. Embedded within a collectivistic culture, Chinese parents are often considered as uniformly high in interdependence, yet individual variation exists and may be related to profiles of emotion socialization. We used cluster analyses as a person-centered approach to explore patterns of Chinese parents’ emotion-related beliefs and socialization responses. We then tested whether parents’ independent and interdependent self-construals were associated with their emotion socialization pattern. Finally, we examined whether parents’ emotion socialization patterns were related to children’s behavioral outcomes.
Seventy-five Chinese parents (65 mothers, 10 fathers) with children aged 7 to 11 years participated (43 girls, 32 boys; M age=9.19, SD=1.29). Parents completed Chinese versions of standard questionnaires measuring parents’ emotion-related beliefs, supportive and non-supportive reactions to positive and negative emotions, self-construals, and children’s prosocial and problem behaviors. Scores for parents’ emotion-related beliefs and reactions were standardized prior to two-step cluster analysis. A three-cluster solution was identified through hierarchical clustering and confirmed through k-means clustering. Table 1 shows final solution means for the value of positive and negative emotions, danger of emotions, and supportive and nonsupportive responses to children’s positive and negative emotions for each cluster. Based on these patterns of emotion-related beliefs and reactions, we termed cluster 1 Emotional Support to reflect the emphasis on value of emotions and corresponding supportive responses to positive and negative emotions. We termed cluster 2 Emotional Salience to reflect the pattern of ubiquitous attention to emotion. We termed cluster 3 Emotional Inattention to reflect the pattern of inattention to emotion. Cluster membership was then dummy-coded and logistic regressions were run to examine whether parents’ endorsement of independent and interdependent self-construals were related to their likelihood of being in each cluster. Results showed that parents with higher interdependent self-construals were more likely to be in the Emotional Inattention cluster, χ2 (2, N=75)=7.132, p=.028, odds ratio=.275, 95% confidence limit=.099- .762, p=.013. Finally, one-way ANOVAs were conducted to examine whether child prosocial, externalizing, and internalizing behavior differed between clusters. Results indicated that child prosocial behaviors differed across clusters (F(2,72)=10.37, p=.000), with children of parents in the Emotional Inattention cluster having the lowest parent-reported prosocial behavior, ps<.05. Altogether, our study contributes a new perspective by taking a person-centered approach to exploring profiles of Chinese parents’ emotion socialization, and by addressing within-culture variation in Chinese parents’ endorsement of interdependence in their self-construals in relation to their pattern of emotion socialization. Results suggests the importance of Chinese parents’ attention to the concept of emotion with their children to foster children’s prosocial behavior.

Authors

• Danhua Zhu, University of California - Irvine
  Presenting Author

• Julie C Dunsmore, University of Houston
  Non-Presenting Author