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Children exhibit a variety of affective responses when faced with stress-provoking social situations, some of which are more beneficial in regulating emotions than others. Because children must deal with these types of situations frequently, it is important to determine factors that may be involved in their ability to regulate their emotions. This study explores two such factors of children’s emotion regulation: the mother-child relationship and the act of retaliation toward peers. Participants in this laboratory investigation were 46 children, ages 8-10 years old. The participants played a difficult, time-pressured computer game against an “opponent” (a videotaped confederate of the same age and gender as the participant). During the game, the “opponent” provoked the children by giving them negative feedback about how they were playing through instant messages and verbal insults. The participants were then able to retaliate by giving the “opponent” either positive or negative feedback. Emotion dysregulation was measured through a questionnaire asking the child to report his or her feelings before the game, after the insults, and after retaliation, as well as through a mother report of the child’s general emotion regulation deficits. The quality of the mother-child relationship was assessed, through a child report of maternal psychological control and maternal acceptance. Results indicated a positive correlation between maternal psychological control and children’s emotion dysregulation both inside and outside of the laboratory. Giving negative feedback was not related to emotion regulation; however, there was a trend toward a negative relationship between emotion dysregulation and providing positive feedback. Finally, a statistical trend for a moderator effect was found such that a positive relationship between emotion dysregulation and the child’s retaliation to the opponent was more likely in cases of mother high psychological control.
The assessment of emotion regulation has been plagued by inconsistent definitions of the term and varying modes of examining it. However, the ultimate goal of emotion regulation is clear: to return to or maintain a state of positive affect such that adaptive functioning in emotionally charged situations is possible.1, 2 The desirability of emotion regulation is understood by children as young as 6, who are able to conceptualize ways they could change negative emotions into more positive ones if they were upset.3 The aim of regulation is not confined to transforming one’s own negative states into positive states, but may also involve purposeful initiation or strengthening of negative affect in someone else.4 When examining parental influences on children’s emotion regulation, past research has focused primarily on maternal depression and marital conflict, with very little attention toward the nuances of the mother-child relationship. Investigation of the linkages between children’s emotion regulation and the more directly manipulative, albeit subtle, parental coercion tactics like psychological control are especially understudied.1, 5
Hypothesis 1: There is a strong positive relationship between mother psychological control and the inability of the child to regulate his or her emotions both directly following the insults (r = .39, p = .007) and after retaliation (r = .47, p = .001). There is a trend toward a statistically significant negative relationship between mother acceptance and the inability of the child to regulate his or her emotions after the insults (r = -.26, p = .080) Mother psychological control is also positively related to the mother’s report of the child’s general lability and negativity (r = .37, p = .017).
Hypothesis 2: There is a trend toward a statistically significant negative relationship between the number of positive feedback responses given to the “opponent” and the inability of the child to regulate his or her emotions after the retaliation (r = -.26, p = .080).
Hypothesis 3: There is a trend toward mother psychological control being a moderator between the child’s retaliation against the “opponent” and the mother’s report of the child’s general lability and negativity (F(1, 40)= 3.42, p = .072.) Post-hoc correlation analyses suggest that the relationship between a child’s negativity and likelihood of retaliation is stronger in cases where the mother is more psychologically controlling.
Our results suggest that emotion dysregulation in children (as observed in the lab and in their general behavior) is related to the quality of their relationships with their mothers. These data therefore lend preliminary support to the idea that mother-child interactions may be important predictors of children’s emotional processing skills. Of course, it is also plausible that a child’s inability to regulate his or her emotions might negatively impact the mother-child relationship over time. Longitudinal studies are needed to tease out the direction of this effect.
Contrary to our expectations, the act of retaliation (as measured by the number of negative feedback responses to the “opponent”) was not related to emotion regulation. In contrast, we found that the more positive responses children gave the “opponent,” the less likely they were to have difficulty regulating their emotions. Though directionality cannot be determined, this finding suggests that for school-aged children in stressful social situations, a positive outlook and the ability to regulate emotions go hand in hand. Our findings also suggest that children who show emotion dysregulation in their daily lives are more likely to retaliate against their opponent in the lab, if they also have a mother who is psychologically controlling.
These results suggest that a child’s emotion regulation skills and relationship with his or her mother are both important predictors of behavior in emotionally stressful social contexts.
Thanks to the research assistants who helped with the data collection: Amanda Alden, Jamila Cunningham, Naresh Jegadeesh, and Ryan Powell. Funding for this project was provided by the University Research Council as well as the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.
We wanted to see whether a child's ability to regulate his emotions during and after a stressful social situation was related to the quality of the mother-child relationship. We found that children with negative mother-child relationships had more difficulty in regulating their emotions both inside and outside of the lab.
Behavioral observations
emotion regulation, school-aged children, mother-child relationship, retaliation
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