Parents’ beliefs about children’s emotions and their conversations with children

This research summary can be incorporated into a lecture or shared with students as a reading to demonstrate how psychological science explores the diversity of human experience. This resource can also be used to encourage students to identify the major components of a research study (i.e., the hypothesis or study question, sample, method, and findings). Students can be asked to identify potential limitations of the study and encouraged to discuss the implications for our understanding of human behavior. Keywords highlight how concepts within and across pillars are incorporated into a single research study.

These researchers were interested in better understanding the connections between parents’ beliefs about emotions (for example, whether certain emotions are dangerous) and their emotion socialization behaviors (meaning how they teach children about emotions). They hypothesized that parents would be more likely to label and teach about negative emotions, while being more likely to encourage positive emotions. These scholars also expected that parents’ pre-existing beliefs about the value and potential dangerousness of positive and negative emotions would be related to the emotion socialization strategies they used while playing a game with their child. To test these hypotheses, 125 parents and their elementary aged children (4-5th grade) were observed (video recorded) while playing an emotion-based board game designed for the study. The sample was ethnically diverse, including African American, White, and Native American participants. The sample was also largely mothers (76%) though more balanced with regard to child gender (48% female). Results of the study revealed a number of associations: 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. In addition to these primary findings, differences in emotional socialization were also seen by race/ethnicity and between mothers and fathers. The authors note that both the use of a more naturalistic experiment as well as variation in gender and race/ethnicity enhances the ability for these findings to be generalized. They also noted that the findings provide valuable insight into the relationship between how parents think about emotions and the ways in which they in turn teach their children about emotions.

Lozada, F., Halberstadt, A., Craig, A., Dennis, P. & Dunsmore, J. (2016). Parents’ beliefs about children’s emotions and their conversations with children. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 25(5), 1525–1538. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-015-0325-1opens in new window

Race, Development, Social, Emotions

The development of resources to broaden diversity and representation in the teaching of high school psychology resources is an APA Committee of Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools initiative supported by funding from the American Psychological Foundation David and Carol Myers Fund. This resource was developed by Eric Castro, Shawn C.T. Jones, PhD, Allyn Olsen, and Catherine Sanderson, PhD.