Emotion socialization as a dynamic process across emotion contexts.

Abstract

Emotion-related socialization behaviors that occur during parent-child interactions are dynamic. According to Eisenberg, Cumberland, and Spinrad's (1998) model, ongoing parental reactions to emotions and discussions of emotion indirectly shape children's socioemotional competence throughout childhood and adolescence. Typically-developing adolescents-girls especially-are at increased risk for developing internalizing symptoms. We examined if and how emotion dynamics of mother-daughter interactions contribute to adolescent girls' internalizing symptoms. We applied grid-sequence analysis (Brinberg et al., 2017) to observational data obtained while N = 96 typically-developing adolescent girls (Mage = 13.99 years) and their mothers engaged in five different emotionally-laden discussions. We identified patterns of expressed emotions that unfolded during each discussion and examined how interdyad differences in those patterns were associated with mothers' and daughters' internalizing symptoms. Dyads differed with respect to whether mothers or daughters tended to regulate positive emotion expressions. Interdyad differences in moment-to-moment dynamics of happy/excited and worried/sad discussions were associated with adolescent girls' social anxiety symptoms, while differences in emotion dynamics of proud, frustrated/ annoyed, and grateful discussions were not. Taken together, results illustrate how methodological innovations are enabling new examination and detailed description of parent-child emotion socialization dynamics.

Transdiagnostic Implications of Parental Socialization of Child and Adolescent Emotional Development: Commentary and Future Directions

“…Otherwise, it can be difficult to disentangle whether parental responses are a precursor or reaction to children's emotional expressions. Novel approaches such as grid-sequence analysis, used to study inter-dyad differences during interactions (Brinberg et al, 2017;Lougheed et al, 2020), can be used to more finely examine dyadic emotion socialization processes over time.…”

Findings, issues, and new directions for research on emotion socialization.

“…These findings are consistent with Tan et al's (2020) emphasis on including neural measures in studies of emotion socialization. Second, Lougheed, Brinberg, Ram, and Hollenstein (2020) examined emotion dynamics during emotionally laden discussions between mothers and daughters: Dyadic differences in who tended to regulate emotion were found. These dyadic differences were associated with adolescents' social anxiety symptoms, at least when dyads were discussing happy/ excited and worried/sad emotional experiences.…”

Parent and Peer Emotion Responsivity Styles: An Extension of Gottman’s Emotion Socialization Parenting Typologies

“…In addition, as children progress from early childhood into middle childhood they are more capable of developing cognitive strategies that allow them to express, internalize, and regulate their emotional experiences and behavior with increasing independence, though parents often continue to act as essential co-regulators by providing consistent emotional guidance and support [ 8 , 25 ]. As such, the dynamic process of emotion socialization progresses through parent–child interactions, and eventually through interactions with peers [ 26 ].…”