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Parents’ Beliefs about Emotions and Children’s Recognition of Parents’ Emotions

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Abstract

This study investigated parents’ emotion-related beliefs, experience, and expression, and children’s recognition of their parents’ emotions with 40 parent-child dyads. Parents reported beliefs about danger and guidance of children’s emotions. While viewing emotion-eliciting film clips, parents self-reported their emotional experience and masking of emotion. Children and observers rated videos of parents watching emotion-eliciting film clips. Fathers reported more masking than mothers and their emotional expressions were more difficult for both observers and children to recognize compared with mothers’ emotional expressions. For fathers, but not mothers, showing clearer expressions was related to children’s general skill at recognizing emotional expressions. Parents who believe emotions are dangerous reported greater masking of emotional expression. Contrary to hypothesis, when parents strongly believe in guiding their child’s emotion socialization, children showed less accurate recognition of their parents’ emotions.

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Notes

  1. We pilot-tested all clips with undergraduate and graduate students who were not parents. For fear, one clip (from The Shining) was less effective with the pilot-testers than the other (from Cliffhanger). However, because the clip from The Shining involved a child in peril we thought it might be more effective with our parent participants than our non-parent pilot-testers. To ensure that at least one fear clip worked for our parents, we included both. Based on parents’ ratings, both worked equally well, and so both were retained in analyses.

  2. When parents’ emotional intensity was also controlled on Step One, the model again remained significant on Step Two with the inclusion of parents’ beliefs about danger and guidance, and parents’ belief that emotions are dangerous remained a significant positive predictor of parents’ report of masking.

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Acknowledgments

Funding was provided by R03 53572 from NICHD and by an AdvanceVT Seed Grant. We express appreciation to Israel Christie, Amy Gravley, Holland Omar, Ryoichi Noguchi, Chad Stephens, and Bradford Wiles for assistance with programming, data collection, and coding. We are grateful to the families who participated in this research. Portions of this manuscript were presented at the 2006 Emotion Preconference at the meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Palm Springs, CA and at the 2006 meeting of the International Society for Research on Emotions, Atlanta, GA.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, 24061-0436, USA

    Julie C. Dunsmore, Pa Her & Marie B. Perez-Rivera

  2. Department of Psychology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Amy G. Halberstadt

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  1. Julie C. Dunsmore
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  2. Pa Her
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Dunsmore, J.C., Her, P., Halberstadt, A.G. et al. Parents’ Beliefs about Emotions and Children’s Recognition of Parents’ Emotions. J Nonverbal Behav 33, 121–140 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-008-0066-6

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