Changes in maternal expressed emotion toward clinically anxious children following cognitive behavioral therapy

The aim of this study was to determine whether maternal expressed emotion (criticism and emotional overinvolvement) decreased across treatment for childhood anxiety. Mothers of 48 clinically anxious children (aged 6-14 years) were rated on levels of criticism (CRIT) and emotional overinvolvement (EOI), as measured by a Five Minute Speech Sample (FMSS) from mothers, prior to and following cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for their children’s anxiety. Results showed a significant decrease in the proportion of mothers who expressed high levels of criticism and emotional overinvolvement from pretreatment to posttreatment. This finding suggests that interventions aimed at reducing symptoms of child anxiety can also result in a decrease of maternal expressed emotion (criticism and emotional overinvolvement).     

Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale: Two Studies of Convergent Validity

As the field of mental health services shifts its focus to early intervention, the need to develop valid and reliable measures of young children's behavioral functioning is clear. Traditional assessment instruments have focused on deficits, problems, and pathologies to the exclusion of strengths and competencies. However, assessing child strengths provides parents, direct service providers, and educators with a more holistic view of the child's functioning and an understanding of skills from which individualized treatment and education plans may be written. The Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale (BERS; Epstein & Sharma, 1998) is a strength-based instrument designed to identify children's behavioral and emotional strengths. The psychometrics of the BERS has been demonstrated through several studies; however, the focus has mainly been on older age students. We sought to assess the convergent validity of the BERS with kindergarten children. The results of these two studies provide further support of the psychometric characteristics of the BERS and indicate its appropriateness with young children.     

The roles of emotion management and perspective taking in individuals’ conflict management styles and disposition to forgive

This study aimed to link two fields of research: conflict management and forgiveness. Adult participants (n = 122) and a validating sample of significant others (n = 122) completed measures of disposition to forgive, conflict style, emotion management, and perspective taking; and multi-dimensional models of their relationships were tested. Disposition to forgive was most consistently associated with problem solving and yielding conflict styles. Greater perspective taking was associated with greater forgiveness, and greater problem solving and yielding conflict styles, as well as with lesser fighting style; and perspective taking fully or partially mediated the relationship between ability to repair emotions and dispositions to forgive and problem solve during conflict. Significant other reports confirmed most of the findings based on self-report.     

Mood trajectories following daily life events

Little is known about the magnitude and duration of mood responses to daily negative events as a function of gender, history of mood disorder, and current substance use. Using computerized ambulatory monitoring techniques, perceived negativity of minor daily events and state affect were prospectively examined every 3 h on average for a 7-day period. Event negativity was associated with depressed mood for 6–9 h following event occurrence, and was associated with happy mood for 3–6 h. Gender and substance use moderated the relationship between event negativity and mood states concurrently, and remained influential for approximately 3 h following the event. History of mood disorder did not moderate any within- or across-day relationships between event negativity and mood. No evidence was found for mood uplifts following daily events in either within- or across-day analyses. The findings are discussed relative to assessment timing in investigations of vulnerability-stress theories.     

Linking emotion regulation strategies to affective events and negative emotions at work

This study examined the use of specific forms of emotion regulation at work, utilizing Gross’s [Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology 2, 271–299] process-based framework of emotion regulation as a guiding structure. In addition to examining employee self-reported usage of these emotion regulation strategies, we assessed the types of discrete negative emotions and negative affective events associated with their use. Results demonstrated that employees reported using a wide variety of emotion regulation strategies, and that each strategy tended to align with a distinct set of discrete negative emotions and affective events. These findings support expanding the focus of emotion regulation strategies at work beyond the deep acting (i.e., changing feelings) and surface acting (i.e., changing expressions) distinction. The results also suggest that focusing on specific strategies, rather than categories of emotion regulation, could enhance understanding of how employees manage their emotions at work.     

Coping with Exposure to Violence: Relations to Emotional Symptoms and Aggression in Three Urban Samples

Relations among exposure to violence, coping, and adjustment were examined in three urban samples. In study 1, which took place in a southeastern city, children ages 6–16 (N = 35; M age = 10.7 years) completed measures of adjustment, exposure to violence, and coping with violence. In study 2, which took place in one southern Midwestern city and one Northeastern city, children ages 8–15 (N = 70; M age = 11.3 years) completed similar measures with the addition of a measure assessing normative beliefs about aggression. Results are in line with the pathologic adaptation model and provide preliminary evidence for two hypothesized pathways explaining the effects of exposure to violence on adjustment: a normalization pathway in which exposure leads to more aggression-supporting beliefs and in turn to greater aggression, and a distress pathway in which exposure leads to avoidant coping and in turn to emotional symptoms.     

Links between parental psychological violence, other family disturbances, and children's adjustment

In a sample of 143 parent-child dyads from two-parent and separated families, this investigation documented the links between parental psychological violence and separation or divorce, severity of parental conflict, triangulation of the child in this conflict, and polarized parent-child alliances. The unique and combined contributions of all these variables to children's behavior problems were also assessed. Participants were parents, mostly mothers, and their 10-12-year-old child. They were recruited through schools, community organizations, and newspapers. Questionnaires were administered at home. Findings suggest that separated families undergo more relational disturbances than two-parent families (more severe conflicts, more triangulation, stronger parent-child alliances), but the amount of parental psychological violence was similar in both groups. Psychological violence was associated with the severity of parental conflict, especially in two-parent families. Triangulation of the child in parental conflict was another correlate of psychological violence. Once all variables were controlled for, psychological violence remained the only significant correlate of children's externalized behavior problems. These findings raise the importance of preventing psychological violence toward children, especially in families plagued with severe parental conflicts.     

Emotional competencies and maladjustment in Singaporean adolescents

This study explores the relationships between four emotional competencies (i.e., intrapersonal skills, interpersonal skills, adaptability skills, and stress management skills) and four factors of maladjustment (i.e., antisocial behavior, anger control problems, emotional distress, and negative self problems) in 217 students from Singapore. Multiple regression findings indicated that stress management skills significantly predicted overall maladjustment, antisocial behavior, anger control problems, emotional distress, and negative self problems. With regard to the three remaining emotional competencies, interpersonal skills significantly predicted negative self problems, while intrapersonal skills and adaptability skills were not predictive of any of the four factors of maladjustment. Implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.     

Unfinished business: How completeness affects the impact of emotional states and emotion concepts on social judgment

In two studies, we compared the impact of cold emotion concept primes with induced hot emotional states on subsequent social judgments. We hypothesized that the completeness of the prime episode is an important determinant of whether accessible information will lead to emotionally congruent or incongruent judgments. We extend previous research on knowledge and emotion accessibility effects by demonstrating that the effects of incomplete versus completed prime episodes are independent of whether we prime emotion states or emotion concepts. That is, our results show that both hot and cold affective information activated by incomplete prime episodes leads to assimilation, whereas information activated by completed prime episodes leads to contrast effects. Implications for accessibility research are discussed.     

Investigating the emotional geographies of exclusion at a multicultural school

This article highlights the idea that educators need to look more carefully at how school practices and discourses are entangled with emotion in relation to perceptions of race and ethnicity. More specifically, the focus is on how emotional geographies are manifest in the formation and maintenance of particular racialisation and ethnicisation processes within a multicultural primary school in the Republic of Cyprus. The uniqueness of this school is that both Greek-Cypriot students and teachers (the majority) and Turkish-speaking students (the minority) are enrolled; this interaction takes place in the background of the long-standing political and ethnic conflict between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. The central argument is that the emotional geographies of exclusion can be understood as manifestations of the racialisation and ethnicisation processes in schools—a finding that has important implications for how to understand the insidious power and tenacity in certain manifestations of these processes.