Mother-child talk about past emotions: Relations of maternal language and child gender over time

Abstract

Emotional understanding and expression is largely constructed in sociocul-tural contexts; thus examination of the ways in which parents talk about emotions with their young children is critical for understanding emotional socialisation. In this longitudinal research, 18 white, middle-class mothers and their preschool children discussed salient past events when the children were 40, 58, and 70 months of age. Analyses revealed that mothers talked more about emotions and talked about a greater variety of emotions with daughters than with sons. Mothers also focused more on negative emotions with daughters than with sons. Although there were no gender differences between girls and boys at the beginning of the study, by the last phase, girls talked more about emotion and about a greater variety of emotion than did boys and also initiated more emotion-related discussions than did boys. Results are discussed in relation to a growing body of evidence on gender and emotion across the life span.     

Mothers who were severely abused during childhood and their children talk about emotions: Co‐construction of narratives in light of maternal trauma

The article focuses on detailed examination of the co‐construction of emotion dialogues between mothers and their 6‐year‐old children in light of mothers' experiences of being sexually, physically, and emotionally abused during childhood. We present examples from dialogues between 3 mothers and their children about emotional events experienced by the children and illustrate emotionally mismatched co‐construction processes. To better understand these difficulties, the article also provides vignettes from interviews with mothers about children's inner worlds and show how examining the interviews may help explain the unfolding of the dialogues and particularly points of difficulty. The dialogues between the mothers and their children were assessed using the Autobiographical Emotional Events Dialogue procedure (Koren‐Karie, Oppenheim, Chaimovich, & Etzion‐Carasso, 2000). The maternal interviews were obtained using the Insightfulness Assessment procedure (Oppenheim & Koren‐Karie, 2002). The discussion focuses on the significance of mother–child dialogues in shaping children's inner world, and points to the importance of providing intervention for adults who experienced childhood traumas that address not only their own personal issues but also their functioning as parents.     

Sensitive but not sentimental: Emotionally intelligent people can put their emotions aside when necessary

Are emotionally intelligent people sentimental? Does their greater sensitivity handicap them or are they able, as theory would expect, to experience and regulate emotions flexibly, depending on their goals? We examined this issue in organizational settings. Good managers are indeed expected to be both attuned to feelings (theirs as well as their subordinates’) and able to put them aside when needed to take tough (but necessary) decisions. Our results show that emotionally intelligent managers do make better managers, as reflected by greater managerial competencies, higher team efficiency and less stressed subordinates. Moreover, and most importantly, emotionally intelligent managers are not just nicer managers. As our results show, emotional intelligence has nothing to do with sentimentality. Actually, it is managers with low EI who have the greatest difficulties to put their emotions aside and not let them interfere when inappropriate.     

Affective expressions in groups and inferences about members' relational well-being: The effects of socially engaging and disengaging emotions

Our findings draw attention to the interpersonal communication function of a relatively unexplored dimension of emotions—the level of social engagement versus disengagement. In four experiments, regardless of valence and target group gender, observers infer greater relational well-being (more cohesiveness and less conflict) between group members from socially engaging (sadness and appreciation) versus disengaging (anger and pride) emotion expressions. Supporting our argument that social (dis)engagement is a critical dimension communicated by these emotions, we demonstrate (1) that inferences about group members' self-interest mediate the effect of socially engaging emotions on cohesiveness and (2) that the influence of socially disengaging emotion expressions on inferences of conflict is attenuated when groups have collectivistic norms (i.e., members value a high level of social engagement). Furthermore, we show an important downstream consequence of these inferences of relational well-being: Groups that seem less cohesive because of their members' proud (versus appreciative) expressions are also expected to have worse task performance.     

Talking about science interests: the importance of social recognition when students talk about their interests in STEM

Although interest development is often conceptualized as a process that occurs within an individual, interest can be developed through various social mechanisms. Messages that suggest that one is or is not welcome within a context may serve to bolster or attenuate interest in those contexts. In a sample of first semester freshmen undergraduate science students, we tested whether or not talking with close others about one’s interests, and receiving social recognition during those conversations, was related to having a greater science career interest over time. Our findings suggest that the way in which students perceive others’ reactions to their scientific interests (social recognition) during these conversations may have the greatest impact on students that face greater external barriers to persisting. We found that positive social recognition appraisals that convey that a listener understands and encourages one’s interest in science predicted a greater science career interest over time for women, but not men. The impact of positive social recognition appraisals on interest in a science career was greatest among women with relatively low or average science identities, but not for women with a relatively high science identity. The implications for the development of students’ interest and for broadening participation in science are discussed.

     

Psychosocial profile of people with AIDS and their caregivers in Egypt

Caring for individuals with AIDS in developing countries represents a major crisis to families and natural caregivers. This study presents the psychosocial profiles of people with AIDS and their caregivers in Egypt to assess the effects of HIV/AIDS on patients, their caregivers, and the factors that influence caregiving and support. Various stressors and challenges for patients as well as hardships the caregiver faces were explored. The literature documents difficulties such as inadequate health care services, lack of resources, and stigma that patients experience in developing countries. Findings indicate an association between the psychosocial effects of AIDS on patients and their caregivers.     

Why people rehearse their memories: Frequency of use and relations to the intensity of emotions associated with autobiographical memories

People may choose to rehearse their autobiographical memories in silence or to disclose their memories with other people. This paper focuses on five types of memory rehearsal: involuntary rehearsal, rehearsal to maintain an event memory, rehearsal to re-experience the emotion of an event, rehearsal to understand an event, or rehearsal for social communication. A total of 337 participants recalled event memories, provided estimates of how often each event was rehearsed and for what reason, and rated the affective characteristics of the events. Rehearsal frequency was highest for social communication and lowest for rehearsals aimed at understanding events. For many rehearsal types, rehearsal was more frequent for positive than negative events. Frequently rehearsed events tended to show less affective fading. The pattern changed when events were socially rehearsed. For positive events, increased social rehearsal was related to a reduction in affective fading. For negative events, increased social rehearsal was associated with increased affective fading.     

Voices :‘A lot of people need someone to talk to.’

The quotations in the three “Voices” photo essays are excerpted from interviews conducted by Steve Boyd and Terry Casteel, guest editors of this special issue. They spoke with people on the street, in schools, and in many other settings, asking them about their needs and about their views of counseling.     

Children's developing ability to depict emotions in their drawings

55 children aged 5 to 9 years were asked to draw pictures depicting happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, and fear as well as pictures that did not express any emotion. These pictures were then scored by nonexpert adults for their overall emotional expressiveness, that is, how well they depicted the intended emotion. The results showed that drawings were generally regarded by adults as emotionally expressive. Happiness was the emotion most easily recognized in children's drawings, closely followed by sadness. The results also showed a linear increase in ratings of emotional expressiveness with age.     

Remembering without a past: individuals with anterograde memory impairment talk about their lives

This paper describes the linguistic resources people with anterograde amnesia draw on in conversational narratives. Because of their problems in recollecting post-morbid memories, it is particularly challenging for such individuals to refer to personal experiences. Seven patients with anterograde memory impairments due to neurotrauma were interviewed one year post-event. Among other topics, they were asked to talk about their new lives and selves, which was expected to be a precarious affair given that they did not have many or any autobiographical memories. Microanalyses of their narratives identified three readily available linguistic resources that participants used to facilitate their storytelling. These were categorized as "memory importation" (transplanting a past memory into the present), "memory appropriation" (taking another's memory as one's own), and "memory compensation" (searching for memories). It is argued that although these resources were not always efficiently used by participants and their use often violated conversational expectations, these linguistic techniques provided a helpful means to sustain the production of personal narratives, even in the absence of autobiographical memory.     

Long life to emotions: Emotional response categorisation across the lifespan

People perceive and organise their social world on the basis of their previous semantic knowledge as well as on the basis of their emotional responses. We tested the hypothesis that emotional response categorisation, namely the tendency to group stimuli on the basis of the emotion they evoke, increases across the lifespan. Young and older adults were asked to categorise target words and either conceptual or emotional response similarity could be used to perform the task. Results showed that older adults were more likely than younger adults to rely on emotional equivalence to categorise stimuli. In addition, current affective state was significantly related to emotional response categorisation. These findings are discussed in relation to recent models that propose a prominent role for emotions in the social life of older adults.     

Long life to emotions: emotional response categorisation across the lifespan

People perceive and organise their social world on the basis of their previous semantic knowledge as well as on the basis of their emotional responses. We tested the hypothesis that emotional response categorisation, namely the tendency to group stimuli on the basis of the emotion they evoke, increases across the lifespan. Young and older adults were asked to categorise target words and either conceptual or emotional response similarity could be used to perform the task. Results showed that older adults were more likely than younger adults to rely on emotional equivalence to categorise stimuli. In addition, current affective state was significantly related to emotional response categorisation. These findings are discussed in relation to recent models that propose a prominent role for emotions in the social life of older adults.     

Self-perception profile in children with cancer: self vs parent report.

Self-perception about competence, behaviour, and self-worth were examined in 30 children (8 to 14 years) recently diagnosed as having cancer and were compared with that of their parents' perception. The poor agreement between parents' and children's ratings on physical appearance and social acceptance is noteworthy in that these two domains are particularly vulnerable in children with cancer, given the effect of chemotherapy on physical appearance and children's tendency to view themselves as socially undesirable or a burden to others. This finding, if replicated, can have implications for therapeutic intervention since the discrepancy score could be used to challenge children's negative views in the context of cognitive therapy to improve their self-esteem.     

On acquiring knowledge about people and the capacity to pretend: response to Leslie (1987)

Leslie (1987) has proposed a cognitivist model for the young child's "theory of mind" and capacity to pretend. Serious shortcomings in Leslie's nondevelopmental, nonsocial, and restrictively cognitive account are noted, and an alternative thesis is proposed: A young child's knowledge about people is grounded in the experience of affectively charged interpersonal relations, and the child's capacity for pretend play develops on the basis of prior abilities to perceive the nature of other people's relatedness to the world. Clinical phenomena associated with autism and congenital blindness provide evidence for this thesis.     

Another way to think about psychological change: experiential vs. incremental

The traditional pre-post treatment difference reflects an incremental notion of change, where a quantity of some psychological function is added to (or subtracted from) a pretreatment quantity. This study presents a complementary, experiential notion of change. Rather than a difference, change is a feeling or experience of having changed, a feeling that one is different than before. Based on a post-treatment interview the Change after Psychotherapy (CHAP) is a method to quantify/rate such ‘differentness’ in terms of how extensively or radically the patient feels having changed. A pre-post quasi-experimental study (N = 49) comparing the CHAP with ratings on the Global Assessment of Functioning, the Karolinska Psychodynamic Profile and the Comprehensive Psychopathological Rating Scale-Self-Affective is reported. The results showed the CHAP to be a reliable, valid and sensitive way to assess an experiential kind of CHAP.     

Why people fail to bike the talk: Car dependence as a barrier to cycling

Antecedent conditions of cycling have been extensively studied, yet barriers that prevent individuals from choosing bicycle transportation are less known. The present study, conducted on a sample of individuals who were both cyclists and drivers (N = 280), investigated whether dependence on car transportation significantly reduces cycling frequency. It also assessed the predictive validity of a larger set of cycling determinants that included moral, objective environmental, demographic and car-related variables. Responses were analyzed using a structural equation modeling approach. Results show that moral considerations do little to predict cycling frequency and that car-related factors such as perceived behavioral control to reduce car use (β = 0.28) and car use habits (β = -0.27) have the strongest predictive power. Objective environmental factors such as temperature (β = -0.13) and altitude (β = -0.15) or demographic factors such as gender (β = 0.19) were also significant predictors of cycling frequency. The present study highlights a new perspective of understanding cycling behavior and pleads for the inclusion of car-related factors in its future conceptualizations and interventions to encourage it.     

Selfish genes vs. selfish people: Sociobiology as origin myth

The sociobiological version of human evolution is criticized as excessively reductionistic and focused on reproductive competition. An alternative version of evolutionary psychology is proposed based on the premise that the most important feature of human evolutionary history is selection for small group living. The structural requirements of group survival can account for fundamentally social motives characteristic of the human species such as cooperation, conformity, and group loyalty.Adapted from a symposium presentation at the annual meeting of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, October 13, 1990, Buffalo, New York.     

Reading between the lies: identifying concealed and falsified emotions in universal facial expressions

The widespread supposition that aspects of facial communication are uncontrollable and can betray a deceiver's true emotion has received little empirical attention. We examined the presence of inconsistent emotional expressions and "microexpressions" (1/25-1/5 of a second) in genuine and deceptive facial expressions. Participants viewed disgusting, sad, frightening, happy, and neutral images, responding to each with a genuine or deceptive (simulated, neutralized, or masked) expression. Each 1/30-s frame (104,550 frames in 697 expressions) was analyzed for the presence and duration of universal expressions, microexpressions, and blink rate. Relative to genuine emotions, masked emotions were associated with more inconsistent expressions and an elevated blink rate; neutralized emotions showed a decreased blink rate. Negative emotions were more difficult to falsify than happiness. Although untrained observers performed only slightly above chance at detecting deception, inconsistent emotional leakage occurred in 100% of participants at least once and lasted longer than the current definition of a microexpression suggests. Microexpressions were exhibited by 21.95% of participants in 2% of all expressions, and in the upper or lower face only.