The associations that parent meta-emotion philosophy and parental
socialization have with adolescent emotion regulation of positive and
negative emotions
Authors: Marie Yap, Orli Schwartz, Ann Wollner, Lynn Fainsilber Katz, Nicholas
Allen
Gottman and colleagues propose that parents' meta-emotion philosophy
(attitudes toward their own and others' emotions) is an important influence on parental
socialization (PS) of their child’s emotions. Preliminary evidence indicates that
parental responses to child negative affect (PS) characterized by acceptance,
coaching, and problem solving are positively associated with children's adaptive
responses to negative affect and inversely associated with depressive
symptomatology. Nonetheless, PS of children's regulation of positive affect is still a
largely neglected issue in this field. Research examining the role of PS after early
childhood has also been scarce.
This study assessed 196 adolescents and one of their parents. Parents were
interviewed using the Parent Meta-Emotion Interview (MEI), which assesses parents’
awareness and acceptance of their own and their child’s emotions (parent metaemotion philosophy), their coaching of their child’s emotions (parental socialization,
PS), as well as their child’s emotion regulation (ER). They also completed
questionnaires on how they respond to their child’s display of negative and positive
emotions (PS). Adolescents were interviewed with the Child-Adolescent MEI, which
is a parallel interview that asks about their experience and parental coaching of
sadness and anger. They also completed questionnaires on their own ER strategies. In
addition, parent and child participated in two interaction tasks that provided a
systematic behavioural measurement of adolescent ER.
This poster will describe the relationships amongst parent meta-emotion
philosophy, PS and adolescent ER of positive and negative emotions, and any
interactions amongst these factors.