Do expressive mothers have expressive children? The role of socialization in children's affect expression

Abstract

The effects of maternal expressiveness and children's gender on children's nonverbal expressiveness were assessed in two settings. In the laboratory, 30 boys and 30 girls of kindergarten age were unobtrusively videotaped while talking about happy, sad, and fearful experiences and while experiencing three social situations designed to elicit happy, disappointed, and apprehensive feelings. Videotapes were rated for emotion expression, using global ratings and EMFACS codes. In school, teachers rated these children's expression of four discrete emotions. In both the laboratory and school settings children were more positively expressive than negatively so, and positive and negative expressiveness were unrelated. In the laboratory children's positive expressiveness was consistent across the three social situations, but negative expressiveness varied across affective context. In both settings, children of low‐expressive mothers were more positively expressive than children of high‐expressive mothers, who tended to be more negatively expressive than children of low‐expressive mothers. The difference in negative expression appeared most striking for anger. Gender was not predictive of children's expressiveness in either setting