“Do I know how you feel?” Parents’ and adolescents’ recognition of each other’s daily moods

Abstract

The study tested daily mutual emotion recognition in 153 parent-adolescent triads, adolescents’ mean age, 15.71 years ( SD = 1.53), 51% girls. Over seven consecutive days, adolescents and parents provided self and other reports on daily positive mood, daily negative mood (distress, anger), and daily time spent together. A series of analyses of variance showed parents underestimated adolescents’ positive and negative moods, while adolescents overestimated parents’ negative moods and underestimated positive ones. Multilevel path analysis showed mothers recognized adolescents’ negative and positive daily moods, while fathers only recognized adolescents’ positive mood. Adolescents recognized changes in their parents’ daily moods, but not always the emotion type. All significant daily associations were modest. Overall, it seems parents and adolescents are not well-informed on each other’s affective changes.