A Multi-Method, Multi-Informant Test of Maternal Emotion Socialization in Relation to Adolescent Fears of Social Evaluation

Fears of negative and positive social evaluation are considered potential transdiagnostic mechanisms underpinning multiple internalizing disorders and impairments in adolescence. Although emotion socialization processes have been associated with adolescents’ internalizing symptoms, the socialization of distinct fears of social evaluation has not been studied. Thus, the goal of the current study was to test whether mother’s emotion expression, direct messages, responses to emotions, and parenting behaviors interact with adolescents’ gender and temperamental shyness in relation to fears of negative and positive evaluation. A community sample of 107 adolescents ages 11 to 14 (M = 12.39; Girls = 45.8%) and their mothers completed survey measures of emotion socialization, temperament, and fears of social evaluation, in addition to participating in a speech preparation task used to code observed behaviors. For shy adolescents, adolescent-reported maternal cautious messages about social evaluation were associated with greater fears of positive evaluation, while encouraging messages were linked to less fears of positive evaluation. Further, maternal self-reported warmth was associated with fewer fears of negative and positive for shy adolescents, while supportive responses to emotions were linked to higher fears of positive evaluation for boys. Among girls, maternal ratings of encouraging messages were associated with higher fears of social evaluation, while cautious messages were linked to lower fears of negative evaluation. These findings are the first to consider several features of emotion socialization in relation to two distinct valences of adolescents’ socio-evaluative fear, and highlight the importance of assessing emotion socialization behaviors via multiple informants and methods.