Parents' inconsistent emotion socialization and children's socioemotional adjustment

Parents socialize children's emotion through active, purposeful strategies and through their own expressivity; yet little research has examined whether parents are inconsistent within or between these socialization domains. The author presents a heuristic model of inconsistency in parents' emotion socialization. Parents (M age = 34.8 years, 85% mothers) of preschool-aged children (M age = 4.5 years, 53% female) reported on their responses to children's emotions, their own expressivity, child emotion regulation and expressivity, child social competence, and child internalizing and externalizing. Parents were largely consistent in their emotion socialization, with one exception being that some highly negatively expressive parents punished children's negative expressivity. This pairing of inconsistent socialization behaviors interacted to explain variance in child emotion regulation and internalizing. The author discusses the implications and limitations of the findings and directions for future research.     

Grief in Comparison: Use of Social Comparison Among Cold Case Homicide Survivors

The current qualitative study examines the use of social comparison among cold case homicide survivors as a method of defining their grief. Twenty-four cold case homicide survivors completed in-depth interviews about the trauma of living with an unsolved homicide. Survivors compared themselves to individuals coping with non-homicidal deaths and fellow homicide survivors. Results indicate survivors of unsolved homicides utilize downward elevation, lateral comparison, and upward contacts in their journey of grief and coping. The direction and type of comparison can have both positive and negative effects on the survivors' views of self and progress made towards emotional recovery. Implications are discussed.     

Sexual Orientation and Human Rights in the Ethics Code of the Psychology and Counseling Organization of the Islamic Republic of Iran (PCOIRI)

The aim of this study is to investigate the necessity of revising the Ethics Code of the Psychology and Counseling Organization of the Islamic Republic of Iran (PCOIRI) with respect to people’s rights and dignity and to avoid unfair discriminations toward sexual orientation and gender identity. It is said that confused diagnoses; wrong decision making; unethical practice; and the subsequent harm caused to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender clients result from the lack of a clear code and relevant guidelines. In addition, certain conditions in Iran (such as religious perspectives, laws, cultural biases, misunderstandings, a lack of local academic and scientific resources, and Western conspiracy theories) lead professional psychologists and researchers to avoid researching sexual minorities and gender identity, which negatively impacts the Ethics Code of the PCOIRI. Iranian and Western researchers have identified four primary sources to which psychologists and counselors can refer when faced with ethical dilemmas: developmental psychology, professional ethics codes, philosophy of psychology literature, and available researches and compilations on professional ethics. Finally it is suggested that, when dealing with homosexual clients and the related ethical dilemmas, Iranian psychologists and counselors need clear and specific guidelines and a professional ethics code developed from more appropriate reference points than legal and religious sources.     

The role of situational goals and audience on self‐reported emotion experience and expression: Dutch and South Korean children compared

Previous research demonstrates that cultural concerns affect emotional lives. However, the question remains to what extent salient cultural concerns influence emotion experience and expression. In the present study, the role of (i) individualistic versus collectivistic goals and (ii) presence of an authority figure (father) versus an equal status figure (peer), were systematically investigated in 24 Dutch and 23 South Korean children's (a) negative emotion experience and (b) emotion expression and motives using hypothetical conflict situations. The results reveal that for children from both cultures emotion experience did not vary between situational goals and the audience present, however their emotion expression did. More specifically, cultural differences in how negative emotions would be expressed appeared in ‘father’ situations and not in ‘peer’ situations. Cultural differences in children's motives for emotion expression were revealed in situations with a collectivistic goal and not when an individualistic goal was presented. Moreover, within group analyses indicate that Dutch children's emotion expressions were more context‐sensitive than those of South Korean children. These results indicate that some situational features corresponding to cultural concerns partly explained cultural differences, whereas other features did not, helping to improve our understanding about variation in the emotional lives of different cultural groups. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Maternal socialization and child temperament as predictors of emotion regulation in Turkish preschoolers

This study investigated the role of maternal socialization and temperament in Turkish preschool children's emotion regulation. Participants consisted of 145 preschoolers (79 boys, 69 girls; M_age= 62 months), their mothers, and daycare teachers from middle‐high socioeconomic suburbs of Istanbul. Maternal child‐rearing practices and emotion socialization behaviours were examined together as interconnected constituents of parenting in relation to emotion regulation skills in young children. Mothers completed a set of questionnaires that measured their child's emotion regulation and temperament as well as their own emotion socialization and child‐rearing behaviours. Teachers also completed a scale that measured the child's ability to regulate emotions. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that child's reactivity negatively and persistence positively predicted emotion regulation. The interaction of maternal responsiveness and child approach–withdrawal also significantly predicted emotion regulation. Simple slope tests were conducted slicing the data in both directions. In the first instance, for children low in Approach, the simple slope of Responsiveness on emotion regulation score was significantly positive. In contrast, for children high in Approach, the simple slope of Responsiveness on emotion regulation score was not significant. In the second instance, for mothers average in Responsiveness, the simple slope of Approach on emotion regulation score was significantly positive. In contrast, for mothers high in Responsiveness, the simple slope of Approach on emotion regulation was not significant. These findings were considered within an interactional model in which positive parenting and inhibited temperament are significant predictors of emotion regulation in Turkish preschoolers. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Examining cognitive development from a conceptual change point of view: The framework theory approach

Sexual socialization refers to how, through social interaction, an individual acquires and internalizes culture-specific knowledge, values and attitudes about sexuality. Little, however, is known about how an individual's genetic characteristics modify this process, or if individuals gravitate towards specific environments according to their genetic characteristics. The aim was to explore whether adolescents' genetic predispositions modify environmental influences on peer-group sexual attitudes. Using a Finnish population-based sample of twins and their siblings (n = 9534), it was found that genetic effects influenced peer-group sexual attitudes in men (52%) and women (46%), thus offering evidence for gene–environment correlation. Men showed less restricted peer-group sexual attitudes than women. Some indications of different genes influencing environmental exposure in men and women were found.     

September 11, 2001: The Clash of Competing Worldviews

The Life Era: Cosmic Selection and Conscious Evolution Eric Chaisson New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987. 259 pages.     

Parenting and Preschoolers' Symptoms as a Function of Child Gender and SES

ABSTRACT

Improving parental discipline practices is a central target of behavioral parent training programs, but little research has examined how discipline varies as a function of gender. Based on the assumption that socialization practices might be related to gender differences in psychopathology, we examined relations between parenting and problem behaviors in children. We predicted that parents would be overreactive toward children displaying symptoms inconsistent with gender stereotypes and lax towards those with gender stereotype-consistent behavior. Parents of 112 preschool-aged children reported on their children's externalizing and internalizing symptoms, and their own lax and overreactive parenting. As hypothesized, internalizing symptoms in girls and externalizing symptoms in boys predicted lax parenting, while externalizing behaviors in girls and internalizing symptoms in boys were associated with overreactive parenting. Exploratory analyses suggest that relations differed somewhat as a function of sociocultural status, pointing to the need for future studies to consider social context.     

Maternal Socialization Goals,Parenting Styles,and Social-Emotional Adjustment Among Chinese and European American Young Adults: Testing a Mediation Model

The authors compared the associations among perceived maternal socialization goals (self-development, filial piety, and collectivism), perceived maternal parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, and training), and the social-emotional adjustment (self-esteem, academic self-efficacy, and depression) between Chinese and European American young adults. The mediation processes in which socialization goals relate to young adults’ adjustment outcomes through parenting styles were examined. Results showed that European American participants perceived higher maternal self-development socialization goals, whereas Chinese participants perceived higher maternal collectivism socialization goals as well as more authoritarian parenting. Cross-cultural similarities were found in the associations between perceived maternal authoritative parenting and socioemotional adjustment (e.g., higher self-esteem and higher academic self-efficacy) across the two cultural groups. However, perceived maternal authoritarian and training parenting styles were found only to be related to Chinese participants’ adjustment (e.g., higher academic self-efficacy and lower depression). The mediation analyses showed that authoritative parenting significantly mediated the positive associations between the self-development and collectivism goal and socioemotional adjustment for both cultural groups. Additionally, training parenting significantly mediated the positive association between the filial piety goal and young adults’ academic self-efficacy for the Chinese group only. Findings of this study highlight the importance of examining parental socialization goals in cross-cultural parenting research.