The relations of parental emotional expressivity with quality of Indonesian children's social functioning

Emotion regulation styles and the tendency to learn from academic failures

BACKGROUND

Research on learners' reactions to failure finds negative emotions may present an obstacle for learning; a painful experience of failure may result in disengagement and avoidance. However, research on styles of emotion regulation and learning from failure is scarce. Self-determination theory's (SDT) conception of adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation differentiates among three styles of regulation: integrative emotion regulation (IER), suppressive emotion regulation (SER) and amotivated emotion regulation.

AIMS

Two studies were conducted, one cross-sectional and one longitudinal, to test the associations between IER and learning from failure among adolescents.

SAMPLE

Study 1 comprised 184 adolescents (mean age = 16.55; SD = 1.2). Study 2 comprised 565 adolescents (8-12 graders). The main analysis was based on 192 adolescents' perceptions of failing math grades.

METHOD

Study 1 surveyed adolescents on their emotion regulation styles, adaptive and maladaptive coping practices when dealing with failure and tendency to learn from failure. Study 2 was longitudinal and focused on failure in math. We approached participants twice, before and after the math test.

CONCLUSIONS

In both studies, IER was related to adaptive coping practices and the tendency to learn from failure. In Study 2, adaptive coping practices mediated relations between IER and learning from failure in math and learning from failure mediated relations between IER and future engagement. These findings suggest that styles of emotion regulation play an important role in learning from failure.

Focusing attention on others' negative emotions reduces the effect of social relationships on children's distributive behaviors

The present study investigates whether directing five- to six-year-old children's attention to hypothetical resource recipients that included familiar and non-familiar people would affect their favoritism toward a familiar person, as reflected in how they allocated resources. In Experiment 1, we instructed participants to give one of several stickers to another person or keep all the stickers for themselves. Under the control conditions, participants more frequently gave stickers to friends than to non-friends. However, when asked about others' emotions, they distributed stickers equally among friends and non-friends. Therefore, focusing on others' thoughts reduced participants' favoritism toward friends. Experiment 2 tested whether focusing on both emotional valences would affect favoritism toward a familiar person, as reflected in children's resource distribution choices. Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1, except we asked participants about the other person's emotional valence. When asked about others' negative emotions, participants distributed the stickers equally between themselves and others. However, when asked about others' positive emotions, they distributed more stickers to friends than to non-friends. Neither others' emotional valence nor group status affected the perceived intensity of their emotion or the participant's emotional state. These results suggest that children's favoritism toward friends can be reduced by encouraging them to think about others' negative emotional states.

Maternal and paternal emotion expression and youths' negative emotions: The moderation of resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia

OBJECTIVE

We investigated whether college students' resting Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA) would moderate the association between parental negative dominant and submissive emotion expression and their negative emotions.

METHODS

Participants were 97 Chinese college students (28.87% male, Mage = 19.11, SD =.89). Participants reported their perceived maternal and paternal emotion expression, as well as their negative emotions. Resting RSA was assessed during a laboratory visit.

RESULTS

Parental negative dominant emotion expression was positively related to students' negative emotions. Additionally, the association between paternal negative dominant emotion expression and negative emotions was stronger among students with low (versus high) levels of resting RSA. Nonetheless, no similar association was found in maternal negative emotion expression.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings contribute important information regarding the different roles of maternal and paternal negative emotion expression in college students' emotional outcomes, and signify the interaction between parental socialization and individual characteristics in human developmental process.

Mothers' emotional expressivity in urban and rural societies: Salience and links with young adolescents' emotional wellbeing and expressivity

This research aims to investigate the salience of mothers' emotional expressivity and its links with adolescents' emotional wellbeing and expressivity in an urban society endorsing more individualism and a rural society ascribing to more collectivism. By comparing Chinese urban (N = 283, M age = 14.13) and rural (N = 247, M age = 14.09) adolescents, this research found that urban mothers' expression of positive-dominant and positive-submissive emotions (PD and PS) were more common while expression of negative-dominant (ND) emotions was less common than rural mothers'. PD and PS had significant links with urban and rural adolescents' increased emotional expressivity and self-esteem, however, only significantly related to urban adolescents' decreased depression but not with rural adolescents'. ND had significant links with both urban and rural adolescents' expression of negative emotions, however, only significantly correlated with urban adolescents' less level of self-esteem and rural adolescents' more expression of positive emotions. No significant difference was found in the salience of urban and rural mothers' expression of negative-submissive (NS) emotions, which positively related to both urban and rural adolescents' depression and emotional expressivity. Moreover, we found that adolescents' emotional wellbeing (i.e., self-esteem and depression) mediated the relationship between mothers' emotional expressivity and adolescents' expressivity in both societies. Overall, the study findings document that the salience of mothers' emotional expressivity and its relations with adolescents' emotional adjustment differ between urban and rural societies.

Cultural Orientation, Parental Emotion Socialization, and Adolescents’ Socio-Emotional Functioning Across Three Asian Cultures: India, China, and Singapore

Limited research has examined parental emotion socialization across Asian cultural contexts. Guided by the theoretical frameworks of family change and self-construal, this study examined cultural orientation toward independence-interdependence, parental emotion socialization processes, and their relations with adolescents’ psychological adjustment across three Asian cultural contexts—rural families in South India, suburban families in China, and families in Singapore. Participants included 300 Indian adolescents ( Mage = 15.58 years; 57.3% male) and their parents, 310 Chinese adolescents ( Mage = 13.04 years; 46.3% female) and their parents, and 241 Singaporean adolescents ( Mage = 14.44 years; 48.3% female) and their parents. Both adolescents and parents completed self-report measures of cultural orientation and emotion socialization, and adolescents completed a measure of their psychological adjustment. We first established construct validation for two emotion socialization processes and found that the factor structure for parental reactions varied across Asian contexts and parent versus adolescent reports, while the factor structure for parental emotion expressivity varied only across informants. Second, we tested whether the two parental emotion socialization processes mediated the association between cultural orientation toward independence-interdependence and adolescent behavior problems, and found differential relations across the three Asian contexts. Our data supported the model of family change and showed that across the Asian societies, the variations in independence-interdependence orientation provide different models of parental emotion socialization with nuances in meaning and function, as revealed by the construct validation of parental reactions and emotional expressivity and their implications for adolescents’ socio-emotional functioning.

Emotions in Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing and Typically Hearing Children

For deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children living in an environment where their access to linguistic input and social interactions is compromised, learning emotions could be difficult, which may further affect social functioning. To understand the role of emotion in DHH children's social life, this study investigated emotional functioning (i.e., emotion recognition, empathy, emotion expression), and its relation with social functioning (i.e., social competence and externalizing behaviors), in 55 DHH children and 74 children with typical hearing (aged 3-10 years; Mage = 6.04). Parental reports on children's emotional and social functioning and factors related to DHH children's hearing were collected. Results showed similar levels of emotional and social functioning in children with and without hearing loss. Use of auditory intervention and speech perception did not correlate with any measures in DHH children. In both groups, higher levels of empathy related to higher social competence and fewer externalizing behaviors; emotion recognition and positive emotion expression were unrelated to either aspect of social functioning. Higher levels of negative emotion expression related to lower social competence in both groups, but to more externalizing behaviors in DHH children only. DHH children in less linguistically accessible environments may not have adequate knowledge for appropriately expressing negative emotions socially.

Reports of adolescent emotion regulation and school engagement mediating the relation between parenting and adolescent functioning in India

Much like other parts of Asia, late adolescence in India is a particularly stressful time with academic pressures of a highly competitive examination system that determines future occupational success. The present study examined interrelations among reports of parenting, adolescents' regulation of academics-related emotions, school engagement, adolescent socio-emotional functioning and state-exam performance. Four hundred and fifty 10th and 12th graders from suburban high schools in India participated, along with their mothers. At the beginning of the school year, mothers completed measures of parenting, and adolescents completed measures of emotion regulation, school engagement and behaviour problems. At the end of the school year, grades from state exams were obtained from the schools. A multiple mediator model was tested using structural equation modelling. Authoritarian parenting was positively related to adolescent behaviour problems, but not adolescent state-exam performance. Maternal non-supportive responses to adolescent negative emotion were indirectly positively related to adolescent behaviour problems through adolescent emotion dysregulation. Adolescent school engagement mediated the positive relation between maternal supportive responses to adolescent negative emotion and adolescent state-exam performance. These findings underscore the relevance of adolescent emotions for their academic functioning, with implications for the development of interventions for those who struggle during these highly stressful years.

Ideal Affect: Cultural Causes and Behavioral Consequences

Most research focuses on actual affect, or the affective states that people actually feel. In this article, I demonstrate the importance and utility of studying ideal affect, or the affective states that people ideally want to feel. First, I define ideal affect and describe the cultural causes and behavioral consequences of ideal affect. To illustrate these points, I compare American and East Asian cultures, which differ in their valuation of high-arousal positive affective states (e.g., excitement, enthusiasm) and low-arousal positive affective states (e.g., calm, peace-fulness). I then introduce affect valuation theory, which integrates ideal affect with current models of affect and emotion and, in doing so, provides a new framework for understanding how cultural and temperamental factors may shape affect and behavior.

Respiratory sinus arrhythmia, effortful control, and parenting as predictors of children's sympathy across early childhood

The goal of this study was to examine physiological and environmental predictors of children's sympathy (an emotional response consisting of feelings of concern or sorrow for others who are distressed or in need) and whether temperamental effortful control mediated these relations. Specifically, in a study of 192 children (23% Hispanic; 54% male), respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), a measure thought to reflect physiological regulation, and observed authoritative parenting (both at 42 months) were examined as predictors of children's effortful control (at 54 months) and, in turn, children's sympathy (at 72 and 84 months). Measures of both baseline RSA and RSA suppression were examined. In a structural equation model, observed parenting was positively related to children's subsequent sympathy through its positive relation to effortful control. Furthermore, the indirect path from baseline RSA to higher sympathy through effortful control was marginally significant. Authoritative parenting and baseline RSA uniquely predicted individual differences in children's effortful control. Findings highlight the potential role of both authoritative parenting and physiological regulation in the development of children's sympathy.

Parents’ Expression and Discussion of Emotion in the Multilingual Family

Parents regularly use words to express and discuss emotion with their children, but does it matter which language they use to do so? In this article, we examine this question in the multilingual family context by integrating findings from both psychological and linguistic research. We propose that parents’ use of different languages for emotional expression or discussion holds significant implications for children’s emotional experience, understanding, and regulation. Finally, we suggest that an understanding of the implications of emotion-related language shifts is critical, particularly in adapting interventions within a rapidly diversifying society.

Parental Expressivity and Parenting Styles in Chinese Families: Prospective and Unique Relations to Children's Psychological Adjustment

OBJECTIVES: Parents from different cultures differ in how frequently they express emotions. However, the generalizability of the relations between parental expressivity and child adjustment in non-Western cultures has not been extensively studied. The goal of the present study was to investigate prospective relations between parental expressivity within the family (positive, negative dominant, and negative submissive expressivity) and Chinese children's psychological adjustment, above and beyond parenting styles. DESIGN: The study used two waves (3.8 years apart) of longitudinal data from a sample (n= 425) of children in Beijing (mean ages = 7.7 years at T1 and 11.6 years at T2). Parental expressivity and parenting styles were self-reported. To reduce the potential measurement overlap, items that tap parental expression of emotions toward the child were removed from the parenting style measure. Children's adjustment was measured with parents', teachers', and peers' or children's reports. RESULTS: Consistent with findings with European American samples, parental negative dominant expressivity uniquely and positively predicted Chinese children's externalizing problems controlling for prior externalizing problems, parenting styles, and family SES. Neither parental expressivity nor parenting styles uniquely predicted social competence. CONCLUSIONS: Despite previously reported cultural differences in the mean levels of parental expressivity, some of the socialization functions of parental expressivity found in Western countries can be generalized to Chinese families. Although parental expressivity and parenting styles are related constructs, their unique relations to child's adjustment suggest that they should be examined as distinct processes.

Empathy-related Responding: Associations with Prosocial Behavior, Aggression, and Intergroup Relations

Empathy-related responding, including empathy, sympathy, and personal distress, has been implicated in conceptual models and theories about prosocial behavior and altruism, aggression and antisocial behavior, and intergroup relationships. Conceptual arguments and empirical findings related to each of these topics are reviewed. In general, there is evidence that empathy and/or sympathy are important correlates of, and likely contributors to, other-oriented prosocial behavior, the inhibition of aggression and antisocial behavior, and the quality of intergroup relationships. Applied implications of these findings, including preventative studies, are discussed, as are possible future directions.

The Role of Socialization, Effortful Control, and Ego Resiliency in French Adolescents' Social Functioning

The relations among effortful control, ego resiliency, socialization, and social functioning were examined with a sample of 182 French adolescents (14-20 years old). Adolescents, their parents, and/or teachers completed questionnaires on these constructs. Effortful control and ego resiliency were correlated with adolescents' social functioning, especially with low externalizing and internalizing behaviors and sometimes with high peer competence. Furthermore, aspects of socialization (parenting practices more than family expressiveness) were associated with adolescents' effortful control, ego resiliency, and social functioning. Effortful control and ego resiliency mediated the relations between parental socialization and adolescents' peer competence and internalizing problems. Furthermore, effortful control mediated the relations between socialization and adolescents' externalizing behavior. Findings are discussed in terms of cultural and developmental variation.

Emotion-related self-regulation and its relation to children's maladjustment

The development of children's emotion-related self-regulation appears to be related to, and likely involved in, many aspects of children's development. In this review, the distinction between effortful self-regulatory processes and those that are somewhat less voluntary is discussed, and literature on the former capacities is reviewed. Emotion-related self-regulation develops rapidly in the early years of life and improves more slowly into adulthood. Individual differences in children's self-regulation are fairly stable after the first year or two of life. Such individual differences are inversely related to at least some types of externalizing problems. Findings for internalizing problems are less consistent and robust, although emotion-related self-regulation appears to be inversely related to internalizing problems after the early years. Self-regulatory capacities have been related to both genetic and environmental factors and their interaction. Some interventions designed to foster self-regulation and, hence, reduce maladjustment, have proved to be at least partially effective.

Mothers' and Children's Positive Emotion: Relations and Trajectories across Four Years

The goals of this study were to examine the relations between and trajectories of mothers' and children's social positive expressivity. Mothers' and children's positive expressivity (PE) were observed annually for 4 years beginning when children were approximately 18 months old (n = 247; 110 girls). Based on correlations, there was evidence of rank-order stability in children's and mothers' PE. Based on growth curve analyses, mothers' and children's PE followed curvilinear trajectories; thus, mean-level instability was found. Children's PE during a free-play interaction with their mothers increased then decreased slightly whereas mothers' affect during the same task decreased then stabilized. Children's PE during a joy-inducing situation (i.e., bubbles) with an experimenter slightly decreased and then increased. In panel models, there was no evidence of prediction over time across children's and mothers' PE when taking stability into account. These unique trajectories and relations provide insight into the developmental pattern of young children's and their mothers' PE elicited within social contexts.

Relations of parenting style to Chinese children's effortful control, ego resilience, and maladjustment

The purpose of the study was to examine the relations of authoritative parenting and corporal punishment to Chinese first and second graders' effortful control (EC), impulsivity, ego resilience, and maladjustment, as well as mediating relations. A parent and teacher reported on children's EC, impulsivity, and ego resilience; parents reported on children's internalizing symptoms and their own parenting, and teachers and peers reported on children's externalizing symptoms. Authoritative parenting and low corporal punishment predicted high EC, and EC mediated the relation between parenting and externalizing problems. In addition, impulsivity mediated the relation of corporal punishment to externalizing problems. The relation of parenting to children's ego resilience was mediated by EC and/or impulsivity, and ego resilience mediated the relations of EC and impulsivity to internalizing problems.

Assessment of preschoolers' positive empathy: concurrent and longitudinal relations with positive emotion, social competence, and sympathy

The purpose of this study was to examine a new measure of children's dispositional positive empathy (i.e., reactions to others' positive emotions) and its concurrent and longitudinal relations with positive emotion, social competence, and empathy/sympathy with negative emotions. At Time 1, 192 3.5-year-olds (88 girls) participated; at Time 2, 1 year later, 168 4.5-year-olds (79 girls) participated. Children's positive empathy was reported by mothers and observed in the laboratory at Time 2. Additionally, mothers, fathers, and non-parental caregivers completed questionnaires at Time 1 and Time 2 regarding children's positive emotion, empathy/sympathy, and social competence. Children's positive emotion was observed at both assessments. There was evidence of reliability of the new reported measure of positive empathy. Additionally, there were numerous positive relations between positive empathy and social competence and between positive empathy and empathy/sympathy with negative emotions. This study provides unique insight into children's positive empathy and relations to socio-emotional functioning.

Positive and negative emotionality: trajectories across six years and relations with social competence

The goals of the present study were to examine (1) the mean-level stability and differential stability of children's positive emotional intensity, negative emotional intensity, expressivity, and social competence from early elementary school-aged to early adolescence, and (2) the associations between the trajectories of children's emotionality and social functioning. Using four waves of longitudinal data (with assessments 2 years apart), parents and teachers of children (199 kindergarten through third grade children at the first assessment) rated children's emotion-related responding and social competence. For all constructs, there was evidence of mean-level decline with age and stability in individual differences in rank ordering. Based on age-centered growth-to-growth curve analyses, the results indicated that children who had a higher initial status on positive emotional intensity, negative emotional intensity, and expressivity had a steeper decline in their social skills across time. These findings provide insight into the stability and association of emotion-related constructs to social competence across the elementary and middle school years.

Understanding mother-adolescent conflict discussions: concurrent and across-time prediction from youths' dispositions and parenting

Adolescence is often thought of as a period during which the quality of parent-child interactions can be relatively stressed and conflictual. There are individual differences in this regard, however, with only a modest percent of youths experiencing extremely conflictual relationships with their parents. Nonetheless, there is relatively little empirical research on factors in childhood or adolescence that predict individual differences in the quality of parent-adolescent interactions when dealing with potentially conflictual issues. Understanding such individual differences is critical because the quality of both parenting and the parent-adolescent relationship is predictive of a range of developmental outcomes for adolescents. The goals of the research were to examine dispositional and parenting predictors of the quality of parents' and their adolescent children's emotional displays (anger, positive emotion) and verbalizations (negative or positive) when dealing with conflictual issues, and if prediction over time supported continuity versus discontinuity in the factors related to such conflict. We hypothesized that adolescents' and parents' conflict behaviors would be predicted by both childhood and concurrent parenting and child dispositions (and related problem behaviors) and that we would find evidence of both parent- and child-driven pathways. Mothers and adolescents (N5126, M age513 years) participated in a discussion of conflictual issues. A multimethod, multireporter (mother, teacher, and sometimes adolescent reports) longitudinal approach (over 4 years) was used to assess adolescents' dispositional characteristics (control/ regulation, resiliency, and negative emotionality), youths' externalizing problems, and parenting variables (warmth, positive expressivity, discussion of emotion, positive and negative family expressivity). Higher quality conflict reactions (i.e., less negative and/or more positive) were related to both concurrent and antecedent measures of children's dispositional characteristics and externalizing problems, with findings for control/regulation and negative emotionality being much more consistent for daughters than sons. Higher quality conflict reactions were also related to higher quality parenting in the past, positive rather than negative parent-child interactions during a contemporaneous nonconflictual task, and reported intensity of conflict in the past month. In growth curves, conflict quality was primarily predicted by the intercept (i.e., initial levels) of dispositional measures and parenting, although maintenance or less decrement in positive parenting, greater decline in child externalizing problems, and a greater increase in control/regulation over time predicted more desirable conflict reactions. In structural equation models in which an aspect of parenting and a child dispositional variable were used to predict conflict reactions, there was continuity of both type of predictors, parenting was a unique predictor of mothers' (but not adolescents') conflict reactions (and sometimes mediated the relations of child dispositions to conflict reactions), and child dispositions uniquely predicted adolescents' reactions and sometimes mothers' conflict reactions. The findings suggest that parent-adolescent conflict may be influenced by both child characteristics and quality of prior and concurrent parenting, and that in this pattern of relations, child effects are more evident than parent effects.

Longitudinal Relations among Parental Emotional Expressivity and Sympathy and Prosocial Behavior in Adolescence

Concurrent and longitudinal relations among parental emotional expressivity, children's sympathy, and children's prosocial behavior were assessed with correlations and structural equation modeling when the children were 55 months to 97 months old (n = 214; M age = 73 months, SD = 9.59) and 8 years later (n = 130; ages 150 to 195 months old, M = 171 months, SD = 10.01). Parent emotional expressivity (positive and negative) and children's sympathy were stable across time and early parent-reported sympathy predicted adolescents' sympathy and prosocial behavior. Parents' positive expressivity was positively related to sympathy and prosocial behavior, but in adolescence, this was likely due primarily to consistency over time. Early observed parental negative expressivity was negatively related to adolescents' prosocial behavior. Reported negative expressivity in childhood was negatively related to boys' sympathy in childhood and positively related to girls' sympathy behavior in adolescence. The later relation remained significant when controlling for the stability of parental expressivity and sympathy, suggesting an emerging positive relation between the variables for girls.

Positive emotion, negative emotion, and emotion control in the externalizing problems of school-aged children

The present study examined the role of emotion and emotion control in children's externalizing problems. Third- to sixth-grade children were administered a self-report measure of positive emotion, negative emotion, and emotion control. Peer- and teacher-reported adjustment problems were assessed. Structural equations modeling revealed that negative emotion, especially anger, was important in externalizing problems. Less positive emotion was associated with more externalizing problems. However, when negative emotion was examined in a more differentiated manner (anger, sadness and fear), the effect of positive emotion was diminished. Anger consistently emerged as a significant predictor of behavior problems. No interaction between either positive emotion and emotion control or negative emotion and emotion control was significant. Results showed main effects of each emotion component, with small interaction effects. Methodological and conceptual implications of the findings from the present study are discussed.

Relations among mothers' expressivity, children's effortful control, and their problem behaviors: a four-year longitudinal study

Longitudinal relations between mothers' expressivity, children's effortful control, and their problem behaviors were examined when children (N = 181) were 6.5-10 years old (T2) and again 2 (T3) and 4 (T4) years later. Mothers reported on their expression of positive and negative dominant emotion. Mothers and teachers reported on children's effortful control and externalizing and internalizing problem behaviors. In structural equation models, variables exhibited consistency over time. Further, the relation between mothers' expressivity (positive minus negative dominant emotion) at T2 and children's externalizing problems at T4 was mediated by T3 effortful control. The same process of mediation was significant for teacher- but not mother-reported internalizing problems. The results provide one explanation for how emotion-related socializing behaviors influence children's problem behaviors.

Prediction of children's empathy-related responding from their effortful control and parents' expressivity

In this study, the linear and interactive relations of children's effortful control and parents' emotional expressivity to children's empathy-related responses were examined. Participants were 214 children, 4.5 to 8 years old. Children's effortful control was negatively related to their personal distress and was positively related to their sympathy. Parents' positive expressivity was marginally negatively related to children's personal distress and was marginally positively related to children's dispositional sympathy. Parents' negative expressivity was positively related to children's personal distress, but primarily at high levels of children's effortful control. Moreover, parents' negative expressivity was negatively related to children's situational sympathy at low levels of effortful control but was positively related to children's dispositional sympathy at high levels of effortful control. There were also quadratic relations between the measures of parents' expressivity and children's empathy-related responses.

The longitudinal relations of regulation and emotionality to quality of Indonesian children's socioemotional functioning

Data regarding individual differences in children's regulation, emotionality, quality of socioemotional functioning, and shyness were obtained from teachers and peers for 112 Indonesian 6th graders. Similar data (plus parents' reports) also were collected when these children were in 3rd grade. For boys, regulation and low negative emotionality generally predicted positive socioemotional functioning (e.g., social skills, adjustment, prosocial tendencies and peer liking, sympathy) within and across time and across reporters, even at the follow-up when initial levels of regulation or negative emotionality were controlled. For girls, relations were obtained primarily for concurrent teacher reports, probably because girls tended to be fairly well regulated and socially competent and variability in their scores was relatively low. Shyness for both sexes tended to be associated with concurrent measures of low regulation, high negative emotionality, and low quality of social competence.