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The U.S. and Russian cultural contexts are thought to foster different models of emotion, with the former emphasizing positive emotions more and negative emotions less than the latter. Little is known about the ways in which parents transmit these models of emotions to children. Cultural products, such as popular storybooks, may serve to provide important tools of transmission. Two studies examined similarities and differences in the extent to which children's books from these cultural contexts depict emotions. In Study 1, U.S., Russian American, and Russian parents described the extent to which books that they recently read to their children depict positive and negative emotions. Although no differences emerged for depictions of positive emotions, U.S. parents described reading books with lower levels of negative emotions than Russian parents, with Russian American parents in between. These differences were partially due to parental beliefs about sadness. In Study 2, verbal and nonverbal depictions of emotions were compared for sets of popular children's books from the U.S. and Russia. U.S. books verbally referenced anger and sadness and depicted happiness, anger, and fear faces less frequently than Russian books. Taken together, these studies suggest that American and Russian parents value and expose their children to different depictions of emotions, particularly negative emotions. Future studies need to examine the ways in which children in these cultural contexts interpret depictions of emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The Self-Expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire (SEFQ) assesses an individual's emotional expressivity in the family context. However, neither the factor structure of the instrument, invariance by age and socioeconomic status (SES), nor substantial evidence for the construct validity of its short form (Self-Expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire-Short Form [SEFQ-SF]) has been established. Therefore, the goals of the present study were to: Conduct a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) for the SEFQ-SF, by testing five competing factorial models; ascertain the invariance of the measurement model across age groups and socioeconomic levels; and examine its convergent validity with a parenting-specific measure. A sociodemographic form, a Portuguese translation of the SEFQ-SF, and the Parent Emotion Regulation Scale (PERS) were administered online to 506 Portuguese mothers of children aged between 1 and 12 years old. The positive-negative bifactor model showed the best fit to the data, supporting the uncorrelated two-factor structure. In multigroup analyses, the measurement model was invariant across two age groups (mothers of toddlers/preschoolers vs. mothers of school-aged children) and socioeconomic levels (low-medium vs. high). Weak to strong correlations were observed between the SEFQ-SF positive-negative dimensions and the PERS subscales in the expected direction. The SEFQ-SF appears to be a reliable and valid measure, comprising two independent factors (positive and negative self-expressiveness within the family) that should be used as distinct subscales and eventually tested for their interaction effects. The invariance of this measurement model across age groups and socioeconomic levels is suggestive of the instrument's developmental suitability and cross-contextual applicability. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

We adopted an intersectional stereotyping lens to investigate whether race-based size bias—the tendency to judge Black men as larger than White men—extends to adolescents. Participants judged Black boys as taller than White boys, despite no real size differences (Studies 1A and 1B), and even when boys were matched in age (Study 1B). The size bias persisted when participants viewed computer-generated faces that varied only in apparent race (Study 2A) and extended to perceptions of physical strength, with Black boys judged as stronger than White boys (Study 2B). The size bias was associated with threat-related perceptions, including beliefs that Black boys were less innocent than White boys (Study 3). Finally, the size bias was moderated by a valid threat signal (i.e., anger expressions, Studies 4A and 4B). Thus, adult-like threat stereotypes are perpetrated upon Black boys, leading them to be erroneously perceived as more physically formidable than White boys.

Parents’ emotions provide unintentional and intentional communications to their children, attaching themselves to the messages that children receive about the ways of the world. Both theory and research suggest that parents’ emotions impact children’s learning and activate children’s affective orientations to objects, concepts, and people. Applying these concepts to real-life problems, this chapter explores the role of emotions as a “fixative” in the process of socializing children’s understanding of the world and particularly the development of beliefs about race. We suggest that the emotions associated with messages about race are not overtly recognized as part of the messages and that these emotional layers are the invisible glue that hold these messages and subsequent beliefs in position. Although the chapter focuses primarily on negative emotions, it also notes the role of positive emotions, such as pride, with the hope of generating more research on these emotions in relation to racial understanding.

OBJECTIVE: This study examined ethnicity (African American, European American, and Lumbee American Indian) and child gender as moderators of gender differences in parents’ emotion socialization behaviors. DESIGN: Mothers and fathers from two samples responded to questionnaires assessing self-expressiveness in the family (N=196) or reactions to children’s negative emotions (N=299). RESULTS: Differences between mothers and fathers varied as a function of ethnicity. Mothers and fathers showed similar levels of negative expressiveness in European American and African American families, whereas fathers were more negatively expressive than mothers in Lumbee families. Mothers reported more supportive reactions than fathers among European Americans and Lumbees, but African American mothers and fathers reported nearly equal levels of supportive reactions. Parent gender x ethnicity interactions were further moderated by child gender. Mothers were generally more supportive of girls’ negative emotions than fathers across all ethnicities. For boys, however, parent gender differences in supportive reactions to negative emotions varied by ethnicity. Mothers were more supportive than fathers among European American parents of boys, but mothers were less supportive than fathers among African American parents of boys. CONCLUSIONS: Results highlight the contextualized nature of emotion socialization, and the need to consider ethnicity and child gender as influences on mothers’ and fathers’ gender-specific emotion socialization.

Researchers have been studying emotion recognition skill for over 100 years (Feleky, 1914), yet technological advances continue to allow for the creation of better measures. Interest in consistent inaccuracies (sometimes described as bias) has also emerged recently. To support research in both emotion recognition skill and bias, we first describe all extant measures of emotion recognition with child actors that we have found, evaluating strengths and constraints of these measures. We then introduce a new measure of emotion understanding (Perceptions of Children's Emotions in Videos, Evolving and Dynamic task) that includes assessment of six emotions portrayed dynamically over rounds by 72 child actors, balancing child race and gender within each emotion, and certified by Facial Action Coding System coders. We provide participant accuracy and bias rates by round and within emotion, based on results from four studies (N = 477 adult participants), and report evidence for reliability over time, criterion and discriminant validity, and multidimensionality of emotion recognition from these studies. We conclude with potential uses of the measure in terms of assessing the accuracy and inaccuracies of participants, including opportunities for the study of developmental processes, individual differences, and confusions between various emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The current study is the first to examine how parents respond to children's ingratitude and how such responses impact children's later gratitude and internalizing symptoms. We focused on parental responses in families with children aged 6-9 years when gratitude may be actively forming as part of socioemotional learning and other-oriented behavior. Parent-child dyads (n = 101; 52% female; 81% European American, 9% Asian/Asian American, 5% African American, 4% Latino) completed lab-based assessments at baseline and 3 years later. Results indicate that we can reliably assess and differentiate six parental responses to children's ingratitude (i.e., parental self-blame, distress, punishment, instruction, let-it-be, and give-in) using a novel scenario-based measure. Moreover, parents of older children reported more self-blame, distress, and let-it-be responses than those of younger children. More frequent distress and less frequent punishing and giving-in responses to ingratitude by parents predicted greater parent-reported child gratitude at follow-up whereas more frequent distress and less instruction and giving-in responses predicted greater child-reported gratitude at follow-up. Punishing responses also predicted greater later internalizing symptoms in children, whereas self-blame and distress responses predicted lower subsequent symptoms. Collectively, findings showed that parental responses to children's ingratitude predicted child gratitude and internalizing symptoms 3 years later, even after controlling for other factors comprising the parent ecology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Classic theories of emotion describe fear as evolutionary based, rooted in survival needs, and universally experienced. As such, fear has been thought to be less socially constructed than most emotions. It may be, however, that cultural beliefs have more influence than previously considered. To understand cultural beliefs in general, we interviewed 22 of the Mapuche people, one of the native people of southern Chile. Today, despite the War of “pacification” and subsequent Westernized schooling and religion, the Mapuche people maintain cultural knowledge and connection with the land. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 17 adults (5 elders, 12 mothers) and, using grounded theory practices, coded for themes. We found substantial evidence regarding the cultural causes of fear, perceptions of utility of fear, and the transformation of fear through socialization. We then crosschecked emergent themes, including the importance of respect as a foundational principle and goal, with five new participants. Our findings suggest a deep, abiding respect for the land, spirits of nature, and people; a devaluing of the emotion of fear; a gentle socialization process away from fear; and the transformative role of respect in attenuating fear. Given the novelty of these findings, confirmation of results via additional sampling or triangulating of methodologies is warranted.

Research suggests that individuals are racially biased when judging the emotions of others (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002) and particularly regarding attributions about the emotion of anger (Halberstadt, Castro, Chu, Lozada, & Sims, 2018; Hugenberg & Bodenhausen, 2003). Systematic, balanced designs are rare, and are comprised of adults viewing adults. The present study expands the questions of racialized emotion recognition accuracy and anger bias to the world of children. Findings that adults demonstrate either less emotion accuracy and/or greater anger bias for Black versus White children could potentially explain some of the large racialized disciplinary discrepancies in schools. To test whether racialized emotion recognition accuracy and anger bias toward children exists, we asked 178 prospective teachers to complete an emotion recognition task comprised of 72 children's facial expressions depicting six emotions and divided equally by race (Black, White) and gender (female, male). We also assessed implicit bias via the child race Implicit Association Test and explicit bias via questionnaire. Multilevel modeling revealed nuanced racialized emotion recognition accuracy with a race by gender interaction, but clear racialized anger bias toward both Black boys and girls. Both Black boys and Black girls were falsely seen as angry more often than White boys and White girls. Higher levels of either implicit or explicit bias did not increase odds of Black children being victim to anger bias, but instead decreased odds that White children would be misperceived as angry. Implications for addressing preexisting biases in teacher preparation programs and by children and parents are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

To learn more about Chilean emotional beliefs related to emotion development, 271 Mapuche and non-Mapuche parents and teachers in urban and rural settings reported their emotion beliefs using a questionnaire invariant in the Chilean context (Riquelme et al., in press). Included are six beliefs previously found to resonate across three United States cultures (i.e., beliefs about the value and cost of certain emotions; control of emotion; knowledge of children's emotion; manipulation of emotion; and emotional autonomy), and five others distinctive to the indigenous people of this region (i.e., value of being calm; controlling fear specifically; interpersonality of emotion; learning about emotion from adults; and regulation through nature). MANOVAs were conducted to examine these beliefs across culture (Mapuche, non-Mapuche), role (parent, teacher), and geographical location (rural, urban). For United States-derived beliefs, there were no main effects, although two interactions with culture by role and location were significant. For all five Mapuche-generated beliefs, there were significant main effects for culture, role, and location. Results highlight both similarities and differences in beliefs across cultures, roles, and geographical location. Implications for the Chilean context include the importance of non-Mapuche teachers' sensitivity to the values and emotion-related beliefs of Mapuche families. Implications for the global context include an expanded view of emotion-related beliefs, including beliefs that children can control fear and be calm, that emotion-related values include attending to the needs of others, and that two ways of controlling emotion are through learning by listening to/watching elders, and by being in nature.

espanolRESUMEN: Las creencias que los padres tienen sobre las emociones de los ninos subyacen a los patrones de socializacion emocional. La cultura mediatiza esta socializacion; sin embargo, este proceso es habitualmente ignorado asumiendo un patron comun de ideales afectivos para todos los ninos aun en contextos de alta migracion y de alta presencia de culturas originarias. Asi, el saber sentir ha sido historicamente mantenido al margen y su estudio desde una vision que reconoce las expectativas y creencias de las familias de grupos minoritarios es incipiente. Son pocos los estudios en Latinoamerica que dan cuenta de las variaciones culturales en las creencias de la emocion y menos los instrumentos que permitan hacerlo. Este trabajo recoge la necesidad de una evaluacion de las creencias de los padres sobre la emocion de los ninos en contextos de diversidad cultural y principalmente de grupos minoritarios de la IX region de La Araucania en Chile. Participaron 307 adultos mapuches y no mapuches madres, padres y profesores de ninos entre 4 y 10 anos de edad. Se realizaron analisis de invarianza de medida, integrando las dimensiones originales del PBACE y nuevas dimensiones propuestas para el instrumento. Los resultados indican buenos indices de confiabilidad y un buen ajuste de las dimensiones analizadas, todas las dimensiones alcanzan al menos la invarianza escalar parcial, exceptuando una de ellas. El manuscrito finaliza analizando las limitaciones y proyecciones del estudio al campo de la educacion y psicologia en escenarios de diversidad cultural migratoria y con presencia de pueblos originarios. EnglishABSTRACT: The beliefs that parents have about children's emotions underlie emotional socialization patterns; culture mediates this socialization, however this effect is usually ignored assuming a common pattern of affective ideals for all children even in contexts of high migration and high presence of original cultures. Thus, knowing how to feel has been historically kept aside and its study, from a vision that recognizes the expectations and beliefs of families of minority groups is incipient. There are few studies in Latin America that account for cultural variations in the beliefs of emotion and less the instruments that allow it to do so. This work gathers the need of an evaluation of the beliefs of the parents on the emotion of the children in contexts of cultural diversity and mainly of minority groups of the IX region of La Araucania, Chile. The sample included 307 mapuche and non-mapuche mothers, fathers, and teachers of children between 4 and 10 years of age. Measurement Invariance analyses were performed integrating the original dimensions of the PBACE and the new dimensions proposed for the instrument. Results indicate good reliability indexes as well as a good adjustment of the analyzed dimensions; all but one dimension reached at least partial scalar invariance. Limitations are noted, and future study in the fields of education and psychology to culturally diverse settings are suggested.

Differential treatment of students by race is well documented, and potentially driven by implicit processes relating to racial prejudice. To better understand some of the pathways by which racial prejudice may be activated, we examined preservice teachers’ racialized perceptions specific to emotion. Forty preservice teachers identified the emotions expressed in 20 Black and White male and female faces in order to assess racialized emotion accuracy and anger bias; participants also judged hostility in videos of 4 Black and White boys’ misbehaviors with peers in school in order to assess racialized attributions. We conducted a series of multilevel models with assessments of Black and White faces (or boys) nested within preservice teachers. Results indicated that emotions in Black faces were less accurately recognized than emotions in White faces; Black faces were more likely to be seen as angry even when they were not, compared to White faces; and boys’ misbehaviors were perceived as more hostile than those of White boys. Together, these results consistently suggest that racialized emotion-related perceptions may enter the classroom with preservice teachers. Implications, as well as limitations that may be resolved in future studies, and extensions of these findings to other minority status populations are discussed.

Teachers’ racialized interpretations of students’ behaviors likely lead to the racial disparities found in discipline across all education levels (Skiba et al., 2011). To explore how four types of teachers’ racial inequity beliefs (i.e., post-racial, American Dream, cultural deficit, schooling inequity) may be associated with teachers’ racialized interpretations of Black and White boys’ behaviors (i.e., hostility, emotionality, behavioral stability, and seriousness), a sample of 228 teachers in the United States filled out the Racism and Inequity Beliefs (RIB) Questionnaire and observed videotapes of six boys potentially misbehaving in school. Teachers’ cultural deficit beliefs uniquely predicted teachers’ negative perceptions of Black boys’ behaviors, with little to no impact on their perceptions of White boys’ behaviors. Specifically, teachers holding more cultural deficit beliefs perceived the Black boys’ behaviors as relatively more hostile, more representative of a behavioral pattern, and more serious compared to teachers who held fewer cultural deficit beliefs, and compared to their judgments of White boys’ behaviors. American Dream beliefs were also uniquely associated with assessments of Black boys’ behavior as more serious, without impact on White boys’ behavior. These results suggest the application of inequitable judgments of boys’ behaviors based on teachers’ racial inequity beliefs and boys’ identifiable race.

Parents' supportive emotion socialization behaviors promote children's socioemotional competence in early childhood, but the nature of parents' supportiveness may change over time, as children continue to develop their emotion-related abilities and enter contexts that require more complex and nuanced social skills and greater autonomy. To test whether associations between parents' supportiveness of children's negative emotions and children's socioemotional adjustment vary with child age, 81 parents of 3- to 6-year-old children completed questionnaires assessing their responses to children's negative emotions and their children's emotion regulation, lability, social competence, and behavioral adjustment. As predicted, child age moderated the associations between parents' supportiveness and children's socioemotional adjustment. For younger children, parents' supportiveness predicted better emotion regulation and less anxiety/internalizing and anger/externalizing problems. However, for older children, these associations were reversed, suggesting that socialization strategies which were supportive for younger children may fail to foster socioemotional competence among 5- to 6-year-old children. These results suggest the importance of considering emotion socialization as a dynamic, developmental process, and that parents' socialization of children's emotions might need to change in response to children's developing emotional competencies and social demands.

To explore how parental socialization of emotion may influence children's emotion understanding, which then guides children's interpretations of emotion-related situations across contexts, we examined the pathways between socialization of emotion and children's adjustment in the classroom, with children's emotion understanding as an intervening variable. Specifically, children's emotion understanding was examined as a mediator of associations between mothers' beliefs about the value and danger of children's emotions and children's adjustment in the classroom within an SEM framework. Classroom adjustment was estimated as a latent variable and included social, emotional, and behavioral indices. Covariates included maternal education, and child gender and ethnicity. Participants were a diverse group of 201 third-graders (116 African American, 81 European American, 4 Biracial; 48.8% female), their mothers, and teachers. Results revealed that emotion-related beliefs (value and danger) had no direct influence on classroom adjustment. However, children whose mothers endorsed the belief that emotions are dangerous demonstrated less emotion understanding and were less well-adjusted in the classroom. Mothers' belief that emotions are valuable was not independently associated with emotion understanding. Findings point to the important role of emotion understanding in children's development across contexts (family, classroom) and developmental domains (social, emotional, behavioral) during the middle childhood years.

Gratitude is a rich socioemotional construct that emerges over development beginning in early childhood. Existing measures of children's gratitude as a trait or behavior may be limited because they do not capture different aspects of gratitude moments (i.e., awareness, thoughts, feelings, and actions) and the way that these facets appear in children. The current study evaluates a battery of new measures assessing children's gratitude to address these limitations. Parent-child dyads (N=101; children aged 6-9) completed a lab-based assessment followed by a 7-day online parental diary and 18-month follow-up survey. In addition to newly developed measures of children's gratitude, the battery included indicators of convergent, concurrent, divergent, and predictive validity. Results demonstrate the complexity of gratitude as a construct and the relative benefits and limits of various assessment modalities. Implications for the measurement of children's gratitude and suggestions for future research on the development of gratitude are discussed.

Given that children’s exposure to gratitude-related activities may be one way that parents can socialize gratitude in their children, we examined whether parents’ niche selection (i.e., tendency to choose perceived gratitude-inducing activities for their children) mediates the association between parents’ reports of their own and their children's gratitude. Parent-child dyads (N =101; children aged 6-9; 52% girls; 80% Caucasian; 85% mothers) participated in a laboratory visit and parents also completed a seven-day online diary regarding children’s gratitude. Decomposing specific indirect effects within a structural equation model, we found that parents high in gratitude were more likely to set goals to use niche selection as a gratitude socialization strategy, and thereby more likely to place their children in gratitude-related activities. Placement in these activities, in turn, was associated with more frequent expression of gratitude in children. We describe future directions for research on parents’ role in socializing gratitude in their children.

Numerous parental emotion socialization factors have been implicated as direct and indirect contributors to the development of children's emotional competence. To date, however, no study has combined parents' emotion-related beliefs, behaviors, and regulation strategies in one model to assess their cumulative-as well as unique-contributions to children's emotion regulation. We considered the 2 components that have recently been distinguished: emotion regulation and emotional lability. We predicted that mothers' beliefs about the value of and contempt for children's emotions, mothers' supportive and nonsupportive reactions to their children's emotions, as well as mothers' use of cognitive reappraisal and suppression of their own emotions would each contribute unique variance to their children's emotion regulation and lability, as assessed by children's teachers. The study sample consisted of an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse group of 165 mothers and their third-grade children. Different patterns emerged for regulation and lability: Controlling for family income, child gender, and ethnicity, only mothers' lack of suppression as a regulatory strategy predicted greater emotion regulation in children, whereas mothers' valuing of children's emotions, mothers' lack of contempt for children's emotions, mothers' use of cognitive reappraisal to reinterpret events, and mothers' lack of emotional suppression predicted less lability in children. These findings support the divergence of emotion regulation and lability as constructs and indicate that, during middle childhood, children's lability may be substantially and uniquely affected by multiple forms of parental socialization.

The goals of the current study were to describe parents’ emotion socialization patterns and to assess relations between parents’ emotion-related beliefs and socialization behaviors during conversations with their children. Participants were 125 parents and their 9- and 10-year-old children from three ethnic groups in the southeastern United States. Parents reported beliefs about children’s emotions. Parents and children were videotaped playing a board game to evoke emotion-related conversations, which were then coded for parents’ labeling, teaching, and encouragement of emotion. Parents used less labeling and teaching for positive than negative emotions, and greater encouragement for positive than negative emotions. Parents with stronger beliefs about the value of positive emotions engaged in less labeling of positive emotions, less teaching of all emotions, and less encouragement of negative emotions. Parents with stronger beliefs about the value of negative emotions engaged in more encouragement of negative emotions. Parents with stronger beliefs that all emotions are dangerous engaged in less labeling of negative emotions. The results of this study have potential clinical implications in helping clients to understand the foundational structures of their behaviors and how both beliefs and behaviors are distinct, yet interrelated constructs.

Theoretical conceptualizations of emotion understanding generally imply a two-factor structure comprised of recognition of emotional expressions and understanding emotion-eliciting situations. We tested this structure in middle childhood and then explored the unique predictive value of various facets of emotion understanding in explaining children's socioemotional competence. Participants were 201 third-grade children and their mothers. Children completed five different measures, which provided eight distinct indices of emotion understanding. Mothers completed two questionnaires assessing children's socioemotional skills and problems. Results indicated that: (a) emotion understanding in third-grade children was differentiated into three unique factors: Prototypical Emotion Recognition, Prototypical Emotion Knowledge, and Advanced Emotion Understanding, (b) skills within factors were modestly related, (c) factors varied in complexity, supporting theoretical and empirical models detailing developmental sequencing of skills, and (d) skills in Prototypical Emotion Knowledge were uniquely related to mothers' reports of third-grade children's socioemotional competence. Implications regarding elementary-school-age children's social cognitive development are discussed.

The present study focused on exploring the emotional experiences and expressions of individuals, the variation in emotional expressions in different social relationships, and their perceptions about the cultural and religious appropriateness of expressing certain emotions. The sample consisted of 54 Sri Lankans who were selected using convenience sampling and the participants were aged between 17 to 64 years. A questionnaire was used to examine how often individuals experience basic emotions and some secondary emotions, to what extent they think that they can express these emotions, the appropriateness of expressing basic emotions to individuals in various relationships, and the appropriateness of feeling and expressing basic emotions according to their cultural and religious backgrounds. Results suggested significant gender differences in experiencing and expressing emotions. There were significant relationships between feeling and expressing some emotions. There were variations in emotional expressions in different social relationships. Findings also suggested that individuals accepted the experience and expression of some emotions according to their cultural and religious backgrounds.

Cross-sectional studies support negative associations between children’s skills in recognizing emotional expressions and their problem behaviors. Few studies have examined these associations over time, however, precluding our understanding of the direction of effects. Emotion recognition difficulties may contribute to the development of problem behaviors; additionally, problem behaviors may constrain the development of emotion recognition skill. The present study tested the bidirectional linkages between children’s emotion recognition and teacher-reported problem behaviors in 1(st) and 3(rd) grade. Specifically, emotion recognition, hyperactivity, internalizing behaviors, and externalizing behaviors were assessed in 117 children in 1(st) grade and in 3(rd) grade. Results from fully cross-lagged path models revealed divergent developmental patterns: Controlling for concurrent levels of problem behaviors and first-grade receptive language skills, lower emotion recognition in 1(st) grade significantly predicted greater internalizing behaviors, but not hyperactivity or externalizing behaviors, in 3(rd) grade. Moreover, greater hyperactivity in 1(st) grade marginally predicted lower emotion recognition in 3(rd) grade, but internalizing and externalizing behaviors were not predictive of emotion recognition over time. Together, these findings extend previous research to identify specific developmental pathways, whereby emotion recognition difficulties contribute to the development of internalizing behaviors, and early hyperactivity may contribute to the development of emotion recognition difficulties, thus highlighting the importance of examining these processes and their mutual development over time.

We addressed three questions about anger in the family, including the derivation of anger, the presence of anger contagion, and the degree to which family members share perceptions about anger in the family. Seventh-grade children, mothers, and fathers independently reported on the frequency and intensity of anger in six family relationships (child to mother, mother to child, child to father, father to child, mother to father, and father to mother). Analyses based on the social relations model revealed that family members share the belief that anger in the family is the result of individuals’ own styles of anger and, to a lesser degree, is created within unique relationships. Family members also recognized emotion contagion effects across all familial relationships. Overall, children, mothers, and fathers seemed to share perceptions about anger in the family with one exception. Implications for further research and family relationships are discussed.

Despite theoretical claims that emotions are primarily communicated through prototypic facial expressions, empirical evidence is surprisingly scarce. This study aimed to (a) test whether children produced more components of a prototypic emotional facial expression during situations judged or self-reported to involve the corresponding emotion than situations involving other emotions (termed "intersituational specificity"), (b) test whether children produced more components of the prototypic expression corresponding to a situation's judged or self-reported emotion than components of other emotional expressions (termed "intrasituational specificity"), and (c) examine coherence between children's self-reported emotional experience and observers' judgments of children's emotions. One hundred and 20 children (ages 7-9) were video-recorded during a discussion with their mothers. Emotion ratings were obtained for children in 441 episodes. Children's nonverbal behaviors were judged by observers and coded by FACS-trained researchers. Children's self-reported emotion corresponded significantly to observers' judgments of joy, anger, fear, and sadness but not surprise. Multilevel modeling results revealed that children produced joy facial expressions more in joy episodes than nonjoy episodes (supporting intersituational specificity for joy) and more joy and surprise expressions than other emotional expressions in joy and surprise episodes (supporting intrasituational specificity for joy and surprise). However, children produced anger, fear, and sadness expressions more in noncorresponding episodes and produced these expressions less than other expressions in corresponding episodes. Findings suggest that communication of negative emotion during social interactions-as indexed by agreement between self-report and observer judgments-may rely less on prototypic facial expressions than is often theoretically assumed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Parents’ supportive reactions to children's negative emotions are thought to promote children's social adjustment. Research heretofore has implicitly assumed that such reactions are equally supportive of children's adjustment across ages. Recent findings challenge this assumption, suggesting that during middle childhood, socialization practices previously understood as supportive may in fact impede children's social adjustment. We explored this possibility in a sample of 203 third-grade children and their mothers. Using structural equation modeling, we tested associations between mothers’ supportive (i.e., problem- and emotion-focused) reactions to children's negative emotions and children's social skills and problems as reported by mothers and teachers. Mothers’ supportive reactions predicted greater social adjustment in children as reported by mothers. Inverse associations, however, were found with teachers’ reports of children's social adjustment: mothers’ supportive reactions predicted fewer socioemotional skills and more problem behaviors. These contrasting patterns suggest potential unperceived costs associated with mothers’ supportiveness of children's negative emotions for third-grade children's social adjustment in school and highlight the importance of considering associations between socialization practices and children's various social contexts. The findings also highlight a need for greater consideration of what supportiveness means across different developmental periods.

This chapter explores the question of whether infants and children produce prototypic emotional facial expressions in emotion-eliciting situations. Investigations of both infants and children are described. These include a natural observation study of a single infant during routine caregiving activities, a systematic experiment in which infants were presented with elicitors of fear and anger, a seminaturalistic experiment during which mothers and children discuss a topic of disagreement, and a study of children’s responses to a fear stimulus presented in the context of an Internet prank. Together these studies show that prototypic expressions are sometimes produced when it is unlikely that the corresponding emotion is experienced and often are not produced when the corresponding emotional experience seems likely. Overall findings suggest that the relationship between emotion and facial expression is more complex than portrayed within contemporary discrete emotion theories.

Emotion competence, particularly as manifested within social interaction (i.e., affective social competence) is an important contributor to children's optimal social and psychological functioning. In this article we highlight advances in understanding three processes involved in affective social competence: first, experiencing emotions, second, effectively communicating one's emotions, and third, understanding others' emotions. Experiencing emotion is increasingly understood to include becoming aware of, accepting, and managing one's emotions. Effective communication of emotion involves multimodal signaling rather than reliance on a single modality such as facial expressions. Emotion understanding includes both recognizing others' emotion signals and inferring probable causes and consequences of their emotions. Parents play an important role in modeling and teaching children all three of these skills, and interventions are available to aid in their development.

Children who are able to recognize others' emotions are successful in a variety of socioemotional domains, yet we know little about how school-aged children's abilities develop, particularly in the family context. We hypothesized that children develop emotion recognition skill as a function of parents' own emotion-related beliefs, behaviours, and skills. We examined parents' beliefs about the value of emotion and guidance of children's emotion, parents' emotion labelling and teaching behaviours, and parents' skill in recognizing children's emotions in relation to their school-aged children's emotion recognition skills. Sixty-nine parent–child dyads completed questionnaires, participated in dyadic laboratory tasks, and identified their own emotions and emotions felt by the other participant from videotaped segments. Regression analyses indicate that parents' beliefs, behaviours, and skills together account for 37% of the variance in child emotion recognition ability, even after controlling for parent and child expressive clarity. The findings suggest the importance of the family milieu in the development of children's emotion recognition skill in middle childhood and add to accumulating evidence suggesting important age-related shifts in the relation between parental emotion socialization and child emotional development. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The field of emotion understanding is replete with measures, yet lacks an integrated conceptual organizing structure. To identify and organize skills associated with the recognition and knowledge of emotions, and to highlight the focus of emotion understanding as localized in the self, in specific others, and in generalized others, we introduce the conceptual framework of Emotion Understanding in Recognition and Knowledge Abilities (EUReKA). We then categorize 56 existing methods of emotion understanding within this framework to highlight current gaps and future opportunities in assessing emotion understanding across the lifespan. We hope the EUReKA model provides a systematic and integrated framework for conceptualizing and measuring emotion understanding for future research.

The goal of this review is to consider how culture impacts the socialization of emotion development in infancy, and infants’ and young children’s subsequent outcomes. First, we argue that parents’ socialization decisions are embedded within cultural structures, beliefs, and practices. Second, we identify five broad cultural frames (collectivism/individualism; power distance; children’s place in family and culture; ways children learn; and value of emotional experience and expression) that help to organize current and future research. For each frame, we discuss the impact on parents’ socialization practices and infants’ subsequent outcomes relating to emotion-related experience, expression, and understanding. We also generate testable hypotheses to further our understanding of the relationships between the five frames and emotion development in infancy.

To examine individual differences in decoding facial expressions, college students judged type and emotional intensity of emotional faces at five intensity levels and completed questionnaires on family expressiveness, emotionality, and self-expressiveness. For decoding accuracy, family expressiveness was negatively related, with strongest effects for more prototypical faces, and self-expressiveness was positively related. For perceptions of emotional intensity, family expressiveness was positively related, emotionality tended to be positively related, and self-expressiveness tended to be negatively related; these findings were all qualified by level of ambiguity/clarity of the facial expressions. Decoding accuracy and perceived emotional intensity also related positively with each other. Results suggest that even simple facial judgments are made through an interpretive lens partially created by family expressiveness, individuals’ own emotionality, and self-expressiveness.

This study investigated parents' emotion-related beliefs, experience, and expression, and children's recognition of their parents' emotions with 40 parent-child dyads. Parents reported beliefs about danger and guidance of children's emotions. While viewing emotion-eliciting film clips, parents self-reported their emotional experience and masking of emotion. Children and observers rated videos of parents watching emotion-eliciting film clips. Fathers reported more masking than mothers and their emotional expressions were more difficult for both observers and children to recognize compared with mothers' emotional expressions. For fathers, but not mothers, showing clearer expressions was related to children's general skill at recognizing emotional expressions. Parents who believe emotions are dangerous reported greater masking of emotional expression. Contrary to hypothesis, when parents strongly believe in guiding their child's emotion socialization, children showed less accurate recognition of their parents' emotions.

The present research examined parental beliefs about children's negative emotions, parent-reported marital conflict/ambivalence, and child negative emotionality and gender as predictors of mothers' and fathers' reported reactions to their kindergarten children's negative emotions and self-expressiveness in the family (N = 55, two-parent families). Models predicting parents' nonsupportive reactions and negative expressiveness were significant. For both mothers and fathers, more accepting beliefs about children's negative emotions were associated with fewer nonsupportive reactions, and greater marital conflict/ambivalence was associated with more negative expressiveness. Furthermore, interactions between child negative emotionality and parental resources (e.g., marital conflict/ambivalence; accepting beliefs) emerged for fathers' nonsupportive reactions and mothers' negative expressiveness. In some instances, child gender acted as a moderator such that associations between parental beliefs about emotions and the emotion socialization outcomes emerged when child and parent gender were concordant.

To assess relationships between parental socialization of emotion and children's coping following an intensely emotional event, parents' beliefs and behaviours regarding emotion and children's coping strategies were investigated after a set of terrorist attacks. Parents (n=51) filled out the Parents' Beliefs about Negative Emotions questionnaire and were interviewed within two weeks of the attacks. Their elementary and middle school-aged children were interviewed eight weeks later. First, parents' beliefs were related to two kinds of parental behaviours. Parents' beliefs about both the value of and the danger of children's emotions were positively related to their discussion with their children. Parents' belief about children's emotions as dangerous was also negatively related to parents' expressiveness with their children. Second, parents' beliefs were related to five kinds of coping strategies reported by their children. Parents' belief about children's emotions as valuable predicted children's problem-solving, emotion-oriented, and support-seeking coping following the terrorist attacks. Parents' belief about children's emotions as dangerous predicted children's avoidance and distraction coping following the attacks. Parents' beliefs about the importance of children's emotions may foster a family atmosphere that facilitates children's coping with intensely emotional events. Results support differentiated, multi-faceted analysis of the broader construct of parental beliefs. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In two studies, fifth- and sixth-grade children's descriptive accounts of sibling jealousy were related to their implicit theories about relationships. Children's jealousy accounts were collected via structured interviews; their implicit theories were assessed by questionnaire. In both studies, children reported experiencing mild to moderate jealousy with diverted attention and favoritism as primary causes. In Study 1 (N = 63; M age = 11 years, 9 months), children who endorsed malleable (incremental) theories about relationships reported longer and more intense jealousy than children who reported fixed (entity) theories about relationships. Findings from Study 2 (N = 42; M age = 10 years, 9 months) replicated Study 1 and additionally demonstrated that malleable theorists' time being jealous was spent generating more mastery-oriented ways to deal with the situation as compared to fixed theorists.

Several conceptual points regarding the measurement of emotion in developing individuals are considered: (a) questions should guide measurement rather than vice versa, (b) divergent outcomes across multiple measures are informative rather than worrisome, (c) measures can assess multiple dimensions of emotion (structure and function), (d) emotions are dynamic processes occurring within changing individuals in changing relationships, (e) emotions and emotional regulation are inextricably interwoven, (f) the affective social competence model allows for the study of dynamic aspects of emotion competence in dynamic ways, within relationships, and across diverse cultures, and (g) the study of emotional competence is useful for interventions with clinical populations.

Mother- and father-reported reactions to children's negative emotions were examined as correlates of emotional understanding (Study 1, N = 55, 5- to 6-year-olds) and friendship quality (Study 2, N = 49, 3- to 5-year-olds). Mothers' and fathers' supportive reactions together contributed to greater child-friend coordinated play during a sharing task. Further, when one parent reported low support, greater support by the other parent was related to better understanding of emotions and less intense conflict with friends (for boys only). When one parent reported high support, however, greater support by the other parent was associated with less optimal functioning on these outcomes. Results partially support the notion that children benefit when parents differ in their reactions to children's emotions.

Children who are able to recognize others’ emotions are successful in a variety of socioemotional domains, yet we know little about how school-aged children's abilities develop, particularly in the family context. We hypothesized that children develop emotion recognition skill as a function of parents’ own emotion-related beliefs, behaviors, and skills. We examined parents’ beliefs about the value of emotion and guidance of children's emotion, parents’ emotion labeling and teaching behaviors, and parents’ skill in recognizing children's emotions in relation to their school-aged children's emotion recognition skills. Sixty-nine parent-child dyads completed questionnaires, participated in dyadic laboratory tasks, and identified their own emotions and emotions felt by the other participant from videotaped segments. Regression analyses indicate that parents’ beliefs, behaviors, and skills together account for 37% of the variance in child emotion recognition ability, even after controlling for parent and child expressive clarity. The findings suggest the importance of the family milieu in the development of children's emotion recognition skill in middle childhood, and add to accumulating evidence suggesting important age-related shifts in the relation between parental emotion socialization and child emotional development.

The goal of this article is to consider how culture impacts the nature of early emotional development. First, we review broad developmental trajectories of emotional development through the integration of biological and social system changes, embedded in the context of culture. Second, we discuss several cultural frameworks with which to examine cross-cultural comparisons of emotional development and how these frameworks impact parental socialization strategies and subsequent emotional outcomes in infancy and early childhood. Throughout, we review recent empirical work that supports the manifestation of cross-cultural similarities and differences in early emotional development.

Mothers (N=67) taught their preschool children crafts while varying emotional expressions (delight, irritation). Mothers’ typical expressive styles were assessed by questionnaire. After three weeks, children's memory was assessed with a free-recall interview followed by re-enactment of craft-making with an interviewer. Children of mothers high in positive expressiveness had more elaborate recall when mothers expressed delight rather than irritation. Children of mothers low in positive expressiveness re-enacted more event details when their mothers were less varied in expression rather than expressive of emotion in general or delight in particular, and had more elaborate recall when their mothers expressed irritation rather than delight. Findings suggest that children remember more when their mother's emotional expressions during an event fit her typical style.

SUMMARY We assessed associations between family styles of expressing emotion and children's expressive styles and skill in understanding emotion. We used a meta-analytic strategy for synthesizing the studies in these two areas, and we examined moderating variables of emotion valence, age group, and measurement diversity in the relationship between family expressiveness and outcomes in children. For emotional expressiveness, positive family expressiveness and positive children's expressiveness were consistently associated across age, but negative family expressiveness and negative children's expressiveness were linearly and curvilinearly related across age, with a U-shaped relationship. For emotion understanding, positive family expressiveness and children's understanding were not related at any age. Negative and negative-submissive family expressiveness and children's emotion understanding tended to be related across age, both linearly and curvilinearly (an inverted U-shaped relationship). Explanations fo...

A theoretical model for affective social competence is described. Affective social competence (ASC) is comprised of three integrated and dynamic components: sending affective messages, receiving affective messages, and experiencing affect. Central and interconnected abilities within each component include awareness and identification of affect, working within a complex and constantly changing social context, and management and regulation. The dynamic integration of the components is emphasized and potential mediating factors are outlined. The model is placed within the context of previous research and theory related to affective social competence; how the model advances future research is also explicated for each component. Research with special populations of children is described to highlight the importance of affective social competence in social relationships and the promise of the ASC model for future research and practice.