Expressing negative emotions to children: Mothers' aversion sensitivity and children's adjustment

Anat Moed, Theodore Dix, Edward R. Anderson, Shannon M. Greene

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

26 Scopus citations

Abstract

Research is unclear about when expressing negative emotions to children performs valuable socialization and regulatory functions and when, instead, it undermines children's adjustment. In this study, we isolated 1 kind of negative expression to test the aversion sensitivity hypothesis: that rapid increases in mothers' negativity as a function of increases in the aversiveness of children's behavior are uniquely problematic for children. During multiple assessments of a divorcing sample over 2 years (N = 284), 12-min interactions between mothers and their 4- to 11-year-old children were recorded. Forty-seven observed child behaviors were ranked from low to high aversive. Within-dyad changes demonstrated that mothers' general negativity-their tendency to express negative emotion at high rates-was unrelated to children's adjustment. In contrast, mothers' aversion-focused negativity-their tendency to increase negative emotional expression rapidly as the aversiveness of children's behavior increased-predicted children's poor social competence, poor emotion regulation, and externalizing behavior problems at the next assessment. The findings suggest that negative expression that reflects mothers' affective sensitivity to aversive child behavior may promote interaction patterns and adaptations in children that are particularly likely to place children at risk for adjustment problems.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)224-233
Number of pages10
JournalJournal of Family Psychology
Volume31
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Mar 2017
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 American Psychological Association.

Keywords

  • Aversive child behavior
  • Children's externalizing problems
  • Parent emotion
  • Parent negativity
  • Parent reactivity

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