Emotion Regulation and Social Competence in Middle Childhood
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
University of Windsor Scholarship at UWindsor Electronic Theses and Dissertations Theses, Dissertations, and Major Papers 2019 Emotion Regulation and Social Competence in Middle Childhood: The Role of Parental Emotional Competence, Personality, and Emotion Socialization Beliefs, Attitudes, and Practices Jennifer Leigh Scammell University of Windsor Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd Recommended Citation Scammell, Jennifer Leigh, "Emotion Regulation and Social Competence in Middle Childhood: The Role of Parental Emotional Competence, Personality, and Emotion Socialization Beliefs, Attitudes, and Practices" (2019). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 7735. https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd/7735 This online database contains the full-text of PhD dissertations and Masters’ theses of University of Windsor students from 1954 forward. These documents are made available for personal study and research purposes only, in accordance with the Canadian Copyright Act and the Creative Commons license—CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivative Works). Under this license, works must always be attributed to the copyright holder (original author), cannot be used for any commercial purposes, and may not be altered. Any other use would require the permission of the copyright holder. Students may inquire about withdrawing their dissertation and/or thesis from this database. For additional inquiries, please contact the repository administrator via email ([email protected]) or by telephone at 519-253-3000ext. 3208. Emotion Regulation and Social Competence in Middle Childhood: The Role of Parental Emotional Competence, Personality, and Emotion Socialization Beliefs, Attitudes, and Practices By Jennifer L. Scammell A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies through the Department of Psychology in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Windsor Windsor, Ontario, Canada © 2019 Jennifer L. Scammell Emotion Regulation and Social Competence in Middle Childhood: The Role of Parental Emotional Competence, Personality, and Emotion Socialization Beliefs, Attitudes, and Practices By Jennifer L. Scammell APPROVED BY: ______________________________________________ C. Rinaldi, External Examiner University of Alberta ______________________________________________ K. Gorey School of Social Work ______________________________________________ K. Soucie Department of Psychology ______________________________________________ R. Menna Department of Psychology ______________________________________________ K. Babb, Advisor Department of Psychology December 12, 2018 iii DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certify that I am the sole author of this thesis and that no part of this thesis has been published or submitted for publication. I certify that, to the best of my knowledge, my thesis does not infringe upon anyone’s copyright nor violate any proprietary rights and that any ideas, techniques, quotations, or any other material from the work of other people included in my thesis, published or otherwise, are fully acknowledged in accordance with the standard referencing practices. Furthermore, to the extent that I have included copyrighted material that surpasses the bounds of fair dealing within the meaning of the Canada Copyright Act, I certify that I have obtained a written permission from the copyright owner(s) to include such material(s) in my thesis and have included copies of such copyright clearances to my appendix. I declare that this is a true copy of my thesis, including any final revisions, as approved by my thesis committee and the Graduate Studies office, and that this thesis has not been submitted for a higher degree to any other University or Institution. iv ABSTRACT Much of what children know about emotions is learned from their parents, so it is important to examine parental beliefs, attitudes, and practices that contribute to emotion socialization. Little is known about how parents’ own emotional competence skills and personality contribute to these beliefs, attitudes, and practices. The purpose of this study was to examine the relations among parent emotional competence (i.e., positive expression, negative expression, empathy, reappraisal, and mature defense mechanisms), parent personality (i.e., openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism), emotion-related parenting style (i.e., emotion coaching) and practices (i.e., supportive reactions to children’s negative emotions), and parent- reported children’s emotion regulation and social competence (i.e., prosocial orientation), comparing mothers and fathers. One-hundred and sixty-three mothers and 29 fathers of children ages 4 to 12 were recruited to complete an online survey, consisting of self- report measures of the study variables. Mothers’ data were analyzed using structural equation modeling, whereas fathers’ data were analyzed using hierarchical regression. For mothers, partial support was found for the study hypotheses related to the impact of maternal emotional competence on mothers’ emotion-related parenting styles and practices, with higher levels of both empathy and positive expression as predictors of higher levels of emotion coaching. Higher levels of positive expression and lower levels of negative expression also predicted higher levels of supportive reactions. When examining indirect effects, only higher levels of both empathy and positive expression were indirectly related to higher levels of supportive reactions through higher levels of emotion coaching. No significant relations for mature defense mechanisms and v reappraisal were found. Additionally, partial support for the study hypotheses related to the impact of mothers’ emotion-related parenting style and children’s outcomes was found. Higher levels of emotion coaching predicted higher levels of supportive reactions to children’s negative emotions, children’s emotion regulation skills, and children’s prosocial orientation. Contrary to the study hypotheses, higher levels of positive expression and lower levels of negative expression directly predicted higher levels of child emotion regulation skills. Although no model was retained for personality, correlations revealed a pattern of relations that show partial support for the study hypotheses, including positive correlations between emotion coaching and each openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness. Analysis of fathers’ data was exploratory because of the small sample size and low power, but revealed similarities to the mothers’ results, including higher levels of positive expression and empathy predicting higher levels of emotion coaching, higher levels of emotion coaching predicting higher levels of supportive reactions and children’s emotion regulation skills, higher levels of negative expression predicting lower levels of supportive reactions, and higher levels of positive expression predicting higher levels of child emotion regulation skills. In contrast to the mothers’ results, higher levels of negative expression and reappraisal predicted better child emotion regulation skills and higher levels of empathy and positive expression were indirectly related to higher levels of child emotion regulation through higher levels of emotion coaching. For personality, positive correlations between emotion coaching and both agreeableness and conscientiousness were found. Results have implications for the importance of expression variables on the overall family emotional climate, emotion socialization, and children’s emotional and social skills. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY .............................................................................. iii ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iv LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................. ix LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... xi LIST OF APPENDICES ................................................................................................... xii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW .....................................1 Emotional Competence and its Role in Social Competence ............................................2 Emotion Socialization ....................................................................................................12 Emotion-Related Parenting Styles ..............................................................................12 Emotion-Related Parenting Practices .........................................................................20 Comparing Mothers’ and Fathers’ Emotion Socialization Style and Practices ..........26 The Role of Parent Characteristics in Parenting ............................................................30 Parent Personality .......................................................................................................31 Parent Emotional Competence ...................................................................................37 The Current Study ..........................................................................................................58 Hypotheses..................................................................................................................59 CHAPTER 2 METHOD ....................................................................................................68