The influence of mother–child emotion regulation strategies on children's expression of anger and sadness.

Morris, Amanda Sheffield; Silk, Jennifer S.; Morris, M.D.; Steinberg, Laurence; Aucoin, Katherine J.; Keyes, Angela W.

doi:10.1037/a0021021

Cited by 181 publications

(147 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…Research addressing this issue, particularly among early school-age children, is rare as is research on cultural variations (Cole & Tan, 2006;Morris et al, 2011). Our data support the commonly held view that mothers try to guide their children's development in line with implicit cultural values and norms.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 74%

Cultural Variations in Mothers' Intuitive Theories: A Preliminary Report on Interviewing Mothers from Five Nations about Their Socialization of Children's Emotions

Trommsdorff

Cole

Heikamp

2012

Global Studies of Childhood

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Parental intuitive theories comprise values, goals, expectations, and cultural beliefs about the nature of parenting and its function for children's development of competence. This article introduces a research design to study mothers' intuitive theories about their socialization of children's emotions, as a means of understanding the cultural meaning of children's emotional development. The intention is not to present a traditional empirical report, but to provide a heuristic for future research. The authors illustrate the basic assumptions, methods, and approach to data analysis used in the research design, using a five-nation cross-cultural study as an example of this methodology. For purposes of illustration, examples of mothers' responses during interviews are included, about their intuitive theories of emotion socialization -that is, their attributions about child behavior, views about their parenting roles and socialization practices, and the salience of particular emotions relative to cultural models of independence and interdependence. This approach provides a more sophisticated sense of cultural similarities and variations within and between nations than has been available in prior research. The importance of parents' intuitive theories for the investigation of the cultural meaning of emotion socialization and future study directions are discussed.Intuitive 'theories' refer to implicit beliefs and assumptions about causal explanatory relations. 'They organize experience, generate inferences, guide learning, and influence behavior and social interactions ' (Gelman & Legare, 2011, p. 380). Though they are tacit and imprecise, they nonetheless influence behavior. We apply the concept of intuitive theories for a better understanding of parental socialization of children's emotions. We assume that one way that emotion socialization occurs in daily life is through parents' and other caregivers' practices, and that these practices are guided by their intuitive theories about child emotional competence, how different emotions are valued, and how they should be managed and expressed. We suggest that an intuitive theory approach can inform theories of emotional development, which have widely ignored the cultural variations in how children's emotions are socialized (Halberstadt & Lozada, 2011).Emotions are socialized in many contexts but in a child's early life parents are particularly important agents (Morris et al, 2007). From their birth, children are exposed to and slowly acquire culture-specific display rules for emotional expression, i.e. norms about when and where the expression of a specific emotion is socially accepted, through observational learning and modeling (Saarni et al, 2006). Moreover, in their dyadic interactions with their caregivers, children learn strategies to regulate emotions. In Western cultures, supportive parenting behaviors (e.g. expressive encouragement, problem-focused reactions) are associated with children's skills at regulating negative emotions (Davidov & Grusec, 2006) ...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 74%

Cultural Variations in Mothers' Intuitive Theories: A Preliminary Report on Interviewing Mothers from Five Nations about Their Socialization of Children's Emotions

Trommsdorff

Cole

Heikamp

2012

Global Studies of Childhood

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“…A recent study has also identified mothers' use of attention refocusing (i.e. distraction) as an effective strategy to reduce preschoolers' anger and sadness (Morris et al, 2011).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socialization of Turkish Children's Emotions: Do Different Emotions Elicit Different Responses?

Çorapçı

Aksan

Yağmurlu

2012

Global Studies of Childhood

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This study addressed mothers' specific responses to children's expressions of sadness and anger. The first goal was to determine whether children's sadness and anger expressions elicited different maternal responses. The role of maternal education and child gender was also examined in sadness and anger socialization. Finally, the relations of sadness and anger socialization responses to children's adjustment were examined and the moderating role of children's emotionality in this relation was explored. Data on emotion socialization were obtained from 140 Turkish mothers of preschoolers based on their responses to hypothetical vignettes. Results showed that mothers were more likely to encourage the expression of sadness compared to anger. More educated mothers were less likely to punish and minimize their children's sadness but reported higher distress responses than less educated mothers. Sadness and anger socialization did not differ by child gender. Finally, low levels of emotional support to child anger were related to aggressive behaviors, but only among children with high emotional dysregulation.

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“…Such a distinction was already effective for emotion studies of gender differences (Fischer and Manstead, 2000), and it may also be effective for cultural studies as interdependent cultures do restrict negative powerful emotions. An increasing number of emotion socialization studies have also begun to differentiate between specific types of negative emotions (US: Morris et al, 2011; Turkey: Corapci et al, 2012; India: Raval and Martini (2009); Nepal: Cole and Tan, 2006). These studies point to culturally distinct uses of emotion socialization practices in response to negative powerful emotions (e.g., anger) and powerless negative emotions (e.g., sadness; see Friedlmeier et al, 2011, in press).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotion displays in media: a comparison between American, Romanian, and Turkish children's storybooks

Wege¹,

González²,

Friedlmeier³

et al. 2014

Front. Psychol.

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Children's books may provide an important resource of culturally appropriate emotions. This study investigates emotion displays in children's storybooks for preschoolers from Romania, Turkey, and the US in order to analyze cultural norms of emotions. We derived some hypotheses by referring to cross-cultural studies about emotion and emotion socialization. For such media analyses, the frequency rate of certain emotion displays can be seen as an indicator for the salience of the specific emotion. We expected that all children's storybooks would highlight dominantly positive emotions and that US children's storybooks would display negative powerful emotions (e.g., anger) more often and negative powerless emotions (e.g., sadness) less often than Turkish and Romanian storybooks. We also predicted that the positive and negative powerful emotion expressions would be more intense in the US storybooks compared to the other storybooks. Finally, we expected that social context (ingroup/outgroup) may affect the intensity emotion displays more in Turkish and Romanian storybooks compared to US storybooks. Illustrations in 30 popular children's storybooks (10 for each cultural group) were coded. Results mostly confirmed the hypotheses but also pointed to differences between Romanian and Turkish storybooks. Overall, the study supports the conclusion that culture-specific emotion norms are reflected in media to which young children are exposed.

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The influence of mother–child emotion regulation strategies on children's expression of anger and sadness.

Cited by 181 publications

References 63 publications

Cultural Variations in Mothers' Intuitive Theories: A Preliminary Report on Interviewing Mothers from Five Nations about Their Socialization of Children's Emotions

Cultural Variations in Mothers' Intuitive Theories: A Preliminary Report on Interviewing Mothers from Five Nations about Their Socialization of Children's Emotions

Socialization of Turkish Children's Emotions: Do Different Emotions Elicit Different Responses?

Emotion displays in media: a comparison between American, Romanian, and Turkish children's storybooks

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