Relations between child temperament and adolescent negative urgency in a high-risk sample

Negative urgency, rash action during negative mood states, is a strong predictor of risky behavior. However, its developmental antecedents remain largely unstudied. The current study tested whether childhood temperament served as a developmental antecedent to adolescent negative urgency. Participants (N = 239) were from a longitudinal study oversampled for a family history of alcohol use disorder (AUD). Negative emotionality (anger and sadness reactivity) and effortful control were measured in childhood (5–8) and negative urgency in adolescence (13–18). Childhood anger reactivity was uniquely related to later negative urgency above and beyond sadness reactivity. Effortful control was not related to later negative urgency; however, a latent variable capturing the shared variance between childhood effortful control and anger reactivity was related to later negative urgency.     

A comparison of older adolescent and adult females' responses to anger-provoking situations

There has been an increase in research on anger in girls and women. However, few researchers have examined anger across different groups of females. The goal of this study was to examine the experience and expression of anger in individuals who differ by age and employee/student status. Two female populations, university students and employees, described their reactions to a hypothetical work/school-related situation. Similar factors elicited an angry emotion, but there were group differences in the responses to the anger experience. The results are interpreted from a gender schema perspective, taking the contextual influence of developmental period and employee/student role into account.     

Multiplicity of Emotions in Moral Judgment and Motivation

Multiple moral emotions were examined from a dynamic motivational framework through two hypothetical dilemmas that originate from the cognitive-developmental research program in morality. A questionnaire based on recognition task measurement of moral motivation and emotions was administered to 546 college students. As part of the dynamic complexity of moral motivation, intrapersonal operation of multiple emotions were expected and found toward each emotion target in each judgment context. Compassion and distress were among the most important moral emotions. Relatively strong degrees of anger and hate were reported toward the victimizers in ways that distinguished judgment choices. Participants distinguished a variety of positive emotions from anger and hate through differential associations with judgment choices. The study revealed orderly patterns of variability in the multiplicity of moral emotional experience based on relations with specific emotion targets, judgment choices, and developmental quality of moral motivation. The overall developmental quality of moral motivation was negatively associated with hate and positively associated with anger toward the victimizers. Emotional awareness was also found to be positively related to the developmental quality of moral motivation. Exploring the intrapersonal multiplicity of moral emotional experience has important implications for understanding the complexity of moral decision making and motivation.     

Growing Up in a Single-Parent Family and Anger in Adulthood

The aim of this article is to determine the sociodemographic and psychological characteristics (e.g., sex, marital status, work status, age, age of losing the father, seeking psychological help, consumption of medications, degree of anxiety and depression, temperament prone to anger) through which one can predict anger as a personality trait in adulthood, as well as establish an overall anger expression index. The study comprised 155 persons of both sexes whose fathers had passed away due to civil causes (e.g., sudden death caused by illness, traffic accidents, and other accidents) or war activities. The results confirmed that psychological characteristics and developmental age are significant predictors of the development of anger as a personality trait.     

Child anger proneness moderates associations between child-mother attachment security and child behavior with mothers at 33 months

Child-mother attachment security, assessed via a modified Strange Situation procedure (Cassidy & Marvin, with the MacArthur Attachment Working Group, 1992), and parent-reported child proneness to anger were examined as correlates of observed child behavior toward mothers during a series of interactive tasks (N = 120, 60 girls). Controlling for maternal sensitivity and child gender and expressive language ability, greater attachment security, and lower levels of anger proneness were related to more child responsiveness to maternal requests and suggestions during play and snack sessions. As hypothesized, anger proneness also moderated several security-behavior associations. Greater attachment security was related to (a) more committed compliance during clean-up and snack-delay tasks for children high on anger proneness, (b) more self-assertiveness during play and snack for children moderate or high on anger proneness, and (c) more help-seeking during play and snack for children moderate or low on anger proneness. Findings further our understanding of the behavioral correlates of child-mother attachment security assessed during late toddlerhood via the Cassidy-Marvin system and underscore child anger proneness as a moderator of attachment-related differences in child behavior during this developmental period.     

Assessment of anger and aggression in male offenders with developmental disabilities

Systematic assessment of anger among people with developmental disabilities has been lacking, especially for hospital inpatients. Reliability and validity of anger self-report psychometric scales were investigated with 129 male patients, mostly forensic. Anger prevalence and its relationship to demographic, cognitive, and personality variables and to hospital assaultive behavior were examined. High internal and intermeasure consistency, and some concurrent validity with staff ratings, were found. Retrospective validity regarding physically assaultive behavior in the hospital was obtained. Hierarchical regressions revealed that patient-reported anger was a significant predictor of assaults postadmission, controlling for age, length of stay, IQ, violence offense history, and personality variables.     

Cynical hostility: developmental factors, psychosocial correlates, and health behaviors

Examined potential differences between individuals with high and low Cook and Medley (1954) Hostility (Ho) scale scores in regard to (a) self-esteem and particular developmental experiences; (b) utilization of social support, experience of anger, and the manner in which anger is managed; and (c) potentially health-damaging behaviors. Individuals with high Ho scale scores were found to be low in covert self-esteem and reported behavior on the part of their parents that reflected (a) less genuine acceptance, (b) more interference in the person's desires as a child, and (c) more punitiveness. In addition, the results indicated that high Ho score individuals avoid seeking or accepting social support, experience anger that is excessive and that occurs in a wide variety of situations, and suppress expression of anger. Finally, it was found that hostile individuals tended to drink more alcohol and drive a car more frequently after drinking and to have greater relative weight.     

The cognitive basis of trait anger and reactive aggression: an integrative analysis.

Cognitive processing approaches to personality have gained momentum in recent years, and the present review uses such a cognitive approach to understand individual differences in anger and reactive aggression. Because several relevant cognitive models have been proposed in separate literatures, a purpose of this review is to integrate such material and evaluate the consistency of relations obtained to date. The analysis reveals that processes related to automatic hostile interpretations, ruminative attention, and effortful control appear to be important contributors to individual differences in angry reactivity. Memory accessibility processes, by contrast, failed to exhibit a consistent relationship with trait anger. This review concludes with the proposal of an integrative cognitive model of trait anger and the discussion of several broader issues, including the developmental origins of cognitive processing patterns and plausible links to temperament-based perspectives.     

3～5岁幼儿表情认知的发展研究

研究通过"命名复制"、"选择建构"和"自由绘画"三种任务,考察了"嘴""眼""眉"等情绪标签在幼儿情绪识别中的优势效应。结果表明:(1)幼儿识别高兴、悲伤和愤怒要早于惊讶,识别高兴的成绩最好,3～4岁是识别悲伤和惊讶的快速发展期;(2)幼儿识别情绪过程中并未出现典型的"嘴部优势"效应,不同情绪具有不同的代表性的情绪标签,识别高兴和惊讶时嘴部是优势区域,而识别悲伤和愤怒时眼睛和眉毛是优势区域;(3)不同顺序的任务差异显著,先前的情绪命名和复制、建构等任务会显著提高儿童的自由绘画成绩。     

Influence of emotional facial expressions on 3-5-year-olds’ face recognition

Three experiments examined 3- and 5-year-olds’ recognition of faces in constant and varied emotional expressions. Children were asked to identify repeatedly presented target faces, distinguishing them from distractor faces, during an immediate recognition test and during delayed assessments after 10 min and one week. Emotional facial expression remained neutral (Experiment 1) or varied between immediate and delayed tests: from neutral to smile and anger (Experiment 2), from smile to neutral and anger (Experiment 3, condition 1), or from anger to neutral and smile (Experiment 3, condition 2). In all experiments, immediate face recognition was not influenced by emotional expression for either age group. Delayed face recognition was most accurate for faces in identical emotional expression. For 5-year-olds, delayed face recognition (with varied emotional expression) was not influenced by which emotional expression had been displayed during the immediate recognition test. Among 3-year-olds, accuracy decreased when facial expressions varied from neutral to smile and anger but was constant when facial expressions varied from anger or smile to neutral, smile or anger. Three-year-olds’ recognition was facilitated when faces initially displayed smile or anger expressions, but this was not the case for 5-year-olds. Results thus indicate a developmental progression in face identity recognition with varied emotional expressions between ages 3 and 5.     

Emotion Regulation of Preschool Children in Foster Care: The Influence of Maternal Depression and Parenting

Emotion regulation is a core developmental process that is related to children’s academic success and mental health. A small body of research has documented that maltreated children show deficits in this developmental arena. The current study was designed to add to the limited literature on emotion regulation in maltreated children in foster care. Emotion regulation tasks were administered to preschool foster children, videotaped, and later coded. Parenting was assessed via coded observations of mother-child interactions. Mothers reported on their experience of depressive symptomatology. We examined the relation of foster parenting and foster mother depression, as well as child characteristics and child welfare experiences, to emotion regulation, specifically in the joy and anger domains. Findings revealed that maternal depression and parental structuring significantly contributed to children’s anger regulation, but not to their regulation of joy. These findings are considered in the context of future research with respect to young maltreated children in foster care.     

How Do Fundamental Christians Deal With Depression?

Drawing from published sources and my own experience as a pastoral counselor with more recent specialization in spousal abuse and anger management, this article gives an explanation of developmental dynamics in the experience of fundamental Christians that provoke reactive depression. Depressant retardant defenses against depression that have been observed in the Christian fundamentalist subculture are described. Four interventions conclude this article.     

Longitudinal associations between low morning cortisol in infancy and anger dysregulation in early childhood in a CPS‐referred sample

Children who experience early adversity are at increased risk for developing psychopathology, and dysfunction of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis is a possible mechanism conferring this risk. This study sought to characterize the association between morning cortisol during different developmental periods and deficits in children's emotion regulation, a core feature of many psychological disorders. Morning cortisol was collected at two time points (i.e., during infancy, M = 13.0 months old, and during early childhood, M = 36.8 months old) from 120 children with histories of child protective services (CPS) involvement. Children completed a lab visit during early childhood (M = 38.6 months old) that involved an observational measure of anger regulation. Results showed that low morning cortisol during infancy, but not early childhood, predicted increased anger dysregulation during early childhood. These results highlight the importance of developmental timing in assessing the effects of HPA axis functioning and suggest that low cortisol during infancy is a risk factor for later emotion regulation difficulties.     

Prediction of toddlers’ expressive language from maternal sensitivity and toddlers’ anger expressions: A developmental perspective

Despite evidence for the importance of individual differences in expressive language during toddlerhood in predicting later literacy skills, few researchers have examined individual and contextual factors related to language abilities across the toddler years. Furthermore, a gap remains in the literature about the extent to which the relations of negative emotions and parenting to language skills may differ for girls and boys. The purpose of this longitudinal study was to investigate the associations among maternal sensitivity, children's observed anger reactivity, and expressive language when children were 18 (T1; n = 247) and 30 (T2; n = 216) months. At each age, mothers reported on their toddlers’ expressive language, and mothers’ sensitive parenting behavior was observed during an unstructured free-play task. Toddlers’ anger expressions were observed during an emotion-eliciting task. Using path modeling, results showed few relations at T1. At T2, maternal sensitivity was negatively related to anger, and in turn, anger was associated with lower language skills. However, moderation analyses showed that these findings were significant for boys but not for girls. In addition, T1 maternal sensitivity and anger positively predicted expressive language longitudinally for both sexes. Findings suggest that the relations between maternal sensitivity, anger reactivity and expressive language may vary depending on the child's developmental stage and sex.     

Exploring Processes in Day-to-Day Parent–Adolescent Conflict and Angry Mood: Evidence for Circular Causality

Parent–adolescent conflict has been studied both as a precursor of long-term macrolevel developmental risks and as an outcome of microlevel, moment-to-moment interaction patterns. However, the family-level processes underlying the maintenance or regulation of conflict in daily life are largely overlooked. A meso-level understanding of parent–adolescent conflict offers important practical insights that have direct implications for interventions. The present study explores day-to-day reciprocal processes and carryover in parents’ and adolescents’ experiences of anger and conflict. Daily diary data provided by parent–adolescent dyads (N = 151) from two-caregiver households (adolescents: 61.59% female, mean age = 14.60 years) over 21 days were examined using a multivariate Poisson multilevel model to evaluate the circular causality principle in parents’ and adolescents’ daily conflict and anger. Findings offer empirical support for the theory, suggesting that parents’ and adolescents’ anger and conflict exist together in a feedback loop wherein conflict is both a consequence of past anger and also an antecedent of future anger, both within and across persons. Increased understanding of the daily interaction patterns and maintenance of parent–adolescent conflict can guide more informed, targeted, and well-timed interventions intended to ameliorate the consequences of problematic parent–adolescent conflict sequences.     

Developmental changes in anger expression and attention focus: learning to wait

Being able to wait is an essential part of self-regulation. In the present study, the authors examined the developmental course of changes in the latency to and duration of target-waiting behaviors by following 65 boys and 55 girls from rural and semirural economically strained homes from ages 18 months to 48 months. Age-related changes in latency to and duration of children's anger expressions and attention focus (e.g., self-initiated distraction) during an 8-min wait for a gift were found. On average, at 18 and 24 months of age, children were quick to react angrily and slower to shift attention away from the desired object than they were at later ages. Over time, children were quicker to distract themselves. By 36 months, distractions occurred before children expressed anger, and anger expressions were briefer. At 48 months, children typically made a quick bid to their mothers about having to wait before distracting themselves; on average, they did not appear angry until the latter half of the wait. Unexpectedly, children bid to their mothers as much at age 48 months as they had at 18 months; however, bids became less angry as children got older. Developmental changes in distraction and bidding predicted age-related changes in the latency to anger. Findings are discussed in terms of the neurocognitive control of attention around age 30 months, the limitations of children's self-regulatory efforts at age 48 months, and the importance of fostering children's ability to forestall, as well as modulate, anger.     

Development of emotional facial recognition in late childhood and adolescence

The ability to interpret emotions in facial expressions is crucial for social functioning across the lifespan. Facial expression recognition develops rapidly during infancy and improves with age during the preschool years. However, the developmental trajectory from late childhood to adulthood is less clear. We tested older children, adolescents and adults on a two-alternative forced-choice discrimination task using morphed faces that varied in emotional content. Actors appeared to pose expressions that changed incrementally along three progressions: neutral-to-fear, neutral-to-anger, and fear-to-anger. Across all three morph types, adults displayed more sensitivity to subtle changes in emotional expression than children and adolescents. Fear morphs and fear-to-anger blends showed a linear developmental trajectory, whereas anger morphs showed a quadratic trend, increasing sharply from adolescents to adults. The results provide evidence for late developmental changes in emotional expression recognition with some specificity in the time course for distinct emotions.     

Stability and change in mothers' representations of their relationship with their toddlers.

This study examined several issues in the developmental dynamics of parents' representations of their relationship with their toddlers. The authors studied 125 mothers and their firstborn toddler sons over a 13-month period. Mothers took the Parent Development Interview twice, when children were 15 and 28 months of age. Home observations of parent-child interactions and maternal ratings of daily hassles were collected when children were 21 and 27 months of age. The 3 factors that characterized mothers' representations of their 15-month-old firstborn sons (Joy-Pleasure/Coherence, Anger, Guilt-Separation Distress) also fit the data very well for their 28-month-old sons. Although there were no changes in average levels of mothers' (a) joy, pleasure, and coherence and (b) guilt and separation distress from 15 to 28 months, there was a significant increase in mothers' levels of anger. Stability analyses suggested a dynamic relationship between mothers' representations of joy, pleasure, and coherence and of anger over the 13-month period. Finally, changes in mothers' representations were predictable by positive mothering (which led to increased joy, pleasure, and coherence) and by parenting daily hassles (which led to more anger).