Emotion Socialization in Cross‐Cultural Perspective

Emotion socialization aims to promote children’s emotion competence. Children’s competence is embedded in cultural contexts that influence caregivers’ expectations of appropriateness of children’s expression and experience of emotions. Two aspects of emotion competence – individualistic and relational emotion competence – are outlined. They offer a theoretical framework to interpret cultural commonalities and differences in emotion socialization strategies. This review summarizes current knowledge about caregivers’ emotion socialization strategies toward children’s negative emotional expressions and related behaviors in cultural perspective. The number of empirical studies in cultures outside of United States remains low. Nonetheless, the available evidence describes a range of emotion socialization strategies that are embedded in caregiving, and their consequences for children’s emotion development. Besides several commonalities across cultures, we describe differences in the degree to which strategies are endorsed by caregivers as well as some of the qualitative information that point to cultural variations. Finally, we note gaps in the literature and suggest future research directions.     

Do maternal power assertive discipline and warmth interact to influence toddlers' emotional reactivity and noncompliance?

Emotional and behavioural self-regulation emerges during infancy and toddlerhood and is heavily influenced by parenting. Parents facilitate toddlers' behavioural regulation (e.g., compliance) by using appropriate control with warmth and managing children's emotional reactivity during situational demands. In contrast, power assertive discipline may strain children's regulatory skills, for example by evoking toddlers' negative affect. However, we have more to learn about how discipline relates to toddlers' self-regulation in the moment and whether concurrent displays of parental warmth may moderate these relations. Mother–toddler dyads (N = 74, M_age = 13.30 months) from low-to-middle income Turkish families participated in a 3-min laboratory task, in which toddlers needed to delay playing with an attractive toy. Maternal discipline, warmth, toddler's emotional reactivity, and noncompliance were coded from observations. Results showed that higher power assertive discipline was associated with more frequent emotional reactivity in toddlers whose mothers' showed warmth during the <84% of the task duration. Maternal warmth was negatively associated with child noncompliance, but warmth did not interact with power assertive discipline in relation to noncompliance. Results suggest that observed power assertive discipline is meaningfully related to toddlers' emotional reactivity and higher levels of expressed maternal warmth attenuates these relations.     

Turkish Children's Expression of Negative Emotions: Intracultural Variations Related to Socioeconomic Status

The goal of the present study was to examine intracultural variations in Turkish children's emotion expression in relation to socioeconomic status (SES) characteristics, alone and in combination with child gender and their interaction partners. Children's expectations about outcomes from expressing and their reasons for hiding their felt emotion in situations that involved unfairness, disappointment, public failure and a mishap were also delineated. A total of 123 school‐aged Turkish children responded to hypothetical vignettes. Boys and girls from middle‐high SES families were equally likely to endorse shame expression. However, lower SES boys were more likely to endorse hiding shame than lower SES girls. Middle‐high SES children showed a tendency for expressing anger and sadness more than lower SES children. Turkish children primarily expected interpersonal support from emotion expression. Upon anger, disappointment and sadness expression, Turkish children expected instrumental support more from their parents than their peers. The intracultural differences are discussed in light of sociodemographic changes accompanied by cultural value shifts that differentially impact socialization goals and practices of families with different SES. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Mediational Role of Effortful Control and Emotional Dysregulation in the Link Between Maternal Responsiveness and Turkish Preschoolers' Social Competency and Externalizing Symptoms

This cross‐sectional study relied on circumscribed measures of emotion regulation and dysregulation to examine their role in mediating the associations of maternal responsiveness and effortful control with social competency and externalizing symptoms. We examined those associations in an understudied cultural context, Turkey, with 118 preschoolers. Emotion regulation and dysregulation showed differential associations with broad indices of self‐regulation such that emotion dysregulation predicted both low social competency and high externalizing symptoms but emotion regulation was only associated with high social competency. Effortful control was unrelated to emotion regulation but was associated with lower levels of emotion dysregulation. Effortful control had both direct and mediated associations with externalizing and social competency (mediated by lower emotion dysregulation). Findings also showed that maternal responsiveness was associated with better social competency and lower externalizing. Those associations were both singly (through effortful control) and doubly mediated (through effortful control and lower emotion dysregulation), similar to US samples. The study contributes to a better understanding of the factors and mechanisms that speak to children's self‐regulation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Religiousness and College Student Alcohol Use: Examining the Role of Social Support

The purpose of this study was to examine the mediating role of social support in the relationship between religiousness and alcohol use in a sample of college students. Two dimensions of religiousness: religious commitment and religious coping were examined as predictors of alcohol use. Participants were male and female college students (N = 221); the majority of the sample was Christian (73.8%). Emotional social support was tested as a mediator. Both religiousness dimensions and emotional social support were related to less frequent alcohol use; however, mediation was not supported. These findings indicate that religious commitment and dispositional religious coping are protective against alcohol use, yet social support does not account for this relationship.