Adultification, anger bias, and adults' different perceptions of Black and White children.

Adultification, perceiving a child as older and more mature, and anger bias, perceiving anger where it does not exist, are two phenomena disproportionally imposed on Black children compared to White children. The current study assessed whether perceiving a Black child as older increases the odds of mistakenly perceiving anger. Participating were 152 parents who viewed video representations of 40 children in an emotion understanding paradigm. Black children were not seen as older than White children but they did have 1.27 higher odds of being misperceived as angry (p < .05). Additionally, for each year increase in perceived age, the odds of anger bias increased by 1.04 for the Black children (p < .05), but did not increase for White children. Implications of this finding include Black children receiving increased consequences when adults perceive them as older and angry.

Parents' Emotion-Related Beliefs, Behaviors, and Skills Predict Children's Recognition of Emotion.

Children who are able to recognize others' emotions are successful in a variety of socioemotional domains, yet we know little about how school-aged children's abilities develop, particularly in the family context. We hypothesized that children develop emotion recognition skill as a function of parents' own emotion-related beliefs, behaviors, and skills. We examined parents' beliefs about the value of emotion and guidance of children's emotion, parents' emotion labeling and teaching behaviors, and parents' skill in recognizing children's emotions in relation to their school-aged children's emotion recognition skills. Sixty-nine parent-child dyads completed questionnaires, participated in dyadic laboratory tasks, and identified their own emotions and emotions felt by the other participant from videotaped segments. Regression analyses indicate that parents' beliefs, behaviors, and skills together account for 37% of the variance in child emotion recognition ability, even after controlling for parent and child expressive clarity. The findings suggest the importance of the family milieu in the development of children's emotion recognition skill in middle childhood, and add to accumulating evidence suggesting important age-related shifts in the relation between parental emotion socialization and child emotional development.

Validation of the questionnaire to measure Chilean teachers' perception of school violence and coexistence management (VI+GEC).

In this article, we present the development and validation of a psychometric scale that measures the teacher's perception in the Chilean school system with respect to elements of school violence and coexistence management. The novelty lies in the incorporation of factors that address violence from teachers to students, from students to teachers and coexistence management. A total of 1072 teachers from the Northern, Central, Southern and Metropolitan macro-zones of Chile participated, with ages between 22 and 76 years (M=44.56; SD=10.52) and from 1 to 54 years of work (M=17.14; SD=10.38). 76.3% identify with the female gender and 23.7% with the male gender. Of the teachers, 78.4% worked mainly in the classroom and the rest performed managerial or administrative functions outside the classroom in the school. The school violence and coexistence management questionnaire for teachers (VI+GEC) was used. The validity of the scale was demonstrated by means of Confirmatory Factor Analysis, convergent validity analysis and discriminant validity. Reliability was demonstrated by means of McDonald's omega coefficient in all the factors of the scale. An analysis with Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) found a mean, and statistically significant influence of the perception of coexistence management on the perception of school violence. The findings are discussed in terms of previous research on school violence and coexistence management.

Is believing seeing? The role of emotion-related beliefs in selective attention to affective cues.

Attentional disengagement from negative affective information and engagement toward positive affective information appears to reflect an avoidant coping mechanism, one that may be associated with the belief that negative emotions are dangerous or undesirable (BNED). To test this hypothesis, we conducted two studies using a dot-probe task measuring attentional preference among college undergraduates. In the first study, BNED was associated with an attentional preference for positive facial cues over negative facial cues, evident after 1000 ms of exposure. In the second study, we included three exposure-time conditions; BNED appeared to be associated with an early disengagement from negative facial cues between 500 and 750 ms post-exposure and a subsequent orientation toward positive facial cues between 750 and 1000 ms post-exposure. We discuss these results in relation to avoidant coping and the relationship between anxiety and attention to affective cues.

A Race-Based Size Bias for Black Adolescent Boys: Size, Innocence, and Threat.

We adopted an intersectional stereotyping lens to investigate whether race-based size bias-the tendency to judge Black men as larger than White men-extends to adolescents. Participants judged Black boys as taller than White boys, despite no real size differences (Studies 1A and 1B), and even when boys were matched in age (Study 1B). The size bias persisted when participants viewed computer-generated faces that varied only in apparent race (Study 2A) and extended to perceptions of physical strength, with Black boys judged as stronger than White boys (Study 2B). The size bias was associated with threat-related perceptions, including beliefs that Black boys were less innocent than White boys (Study 3). Finally, the size bias was moderated by a valid threat signal (i.e., anger expressions, Studies 4A and 4B). Thus, adult-like threat stereotypes are perpetrated upon Black boys, leading them to be erroneously perceived as more physically formidable than White boys.

Teachers' racialized anger: Implications for discipline disparities.

The contribution of racial bias to teachers' racialized discipline practices is increasingly clear, but the processes by which these biases are activated are less well understood. This study examined teachers' emotional responses to students' misbehaviors by student race as well as whether teachers' emotional responses serve to mediate the association between student race and teachers' discipline practices. Results from a sample of 228 teachers in the United States indicated that teachers were 71% more likely to report feeling anger as compared to concern when they read about a potentially challenging behavior of a Black student as compared to a White student. Additionally, teachers' anger mediated the association between student race and discipline, suggesting teacher anger as a potential point of intervention for change.

Emotions are a window into one's heart": a qualitative analysis of parental beliefs about children's emotions across three ethnic groups.

We conducted a qualitative study to explore parental beliefs about emotions in the family across three cultures (African American, European American, and Lumbee American Indian), using the underutilized yet powerful methodology of focus groups. The main goal of this monograph is to understand parents' beliefs about the role of emotions in the family and how cultural or ethnic background may influence those beliefs. Based on philosophical traditions and previous research, three dimensions of parental beliefs were predicted: Value of Emotion, Socialization of Emotion, and Controllability of Emotion. We expected new themes to emerge during the focus groups.Twelve focus groups were conducted with 87 parents from the three cultural groups mentioned above. Groups met for two sessions scheduled 2 weeks apart. Focus group discussions were led by same-ethnicity moderators. Aninductive analysis was conducted; key themes and subthemes were identified.All three theoretically derived dimensions were well represented in each focus group. Cultural similarities in themes within these dimensions included children's appropriate expression of negative emotions, role of emotion in the home, children's capacity for controlling emotions, and parents' role in socialization of emotion. Cultural variations included concern about parents' expression of negative emotion, children's modulation of positive emotion, the role emotions play in behavior, and choice in emotional experience. Two new dimensions also emerged: Relational Nature of Emotions and Changeability of Emotions. Cultural similarities in themes within these dimensions included emphasis on emotional connections with children, emotional contagion in families, developmental change in children's emotions, and intergenerational change in emotion socialization. Cultural variation included discussion of emotions as guides for action and children's emotional privacy. Dimensions and the themes and subthemes within them are presented with supporting evidence and sources. Implications of parental beliefs for emotion socialization theory and future research, as well as limitations, are discussed.

Parents' responses to children's ingratitude are associated with children's gratitude and internalizing 3 years later.

The current study is the first to examine how parents respond to children's ingratitude and how such responses impact children's later gratitude and internalizing symptoms. We focused on parental responses in families with children aged 6-9 years when gratitude may be actively forming as part of socioemotional learning and other-oriented behavior. Parent-child dyads (n = 101; 52% female; 81% European American, 9% Asian/Asian American, 5% African American, 4% Latino) completed lab-based assessments at baseline and 3 years later. Results indicate that we can reliably assess and differentiate six parental responses to children's ingratitude (i.e., parental self-blame, distress, punishment, instruction, let-it-be, and give-in) using a novel scenario-based measure. Moreover, parents of older children reported more self-blame, distress, and let-it-be responses than those of younger children. More frequent distress and less frequent punishing and giving-in responses to ingratitude by parents predicted greater parent-reported child gratitude at follow-up whereas more frequent distress and less instruction and giving-in responses predicted greater child-reported gratitude at follow-up. Punishing responses also predicted greater later internalizing symptoms in children, whereas self-blame and distress responses predicted lower subsequent symptoms. Collectively, findings showed that parental responses to children's ingratitude predicted child gratitude and internalizing symptoms 3 years later, even after controlling for other factors comprising the parent ecology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Racialized emotion recognition accuracy and anger bias of children's faces.

Research suggests that individuals are racially biased when judging the emotions of others (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002) and particularly regarding attributions about the emotion of anger (Halberstadt, Castro, Chu, Lozada, & Sims, 2018; Hugenberg & Bodenhausen, 2003). Systematic, balanced designs are rare, and are comprised of adults viewing adults. The present study expands the questions of racialized emotion recognition accuracy and anger bias to the world of children. Findings that adults demonstrate either less emotion accuracy and/or greater anger bias for Black versus White children could potentially explain some of the large racialized disciplinary discrepancies in schools. To test whether racialized emotion recognition accuracy and anger bias toward children exists, we asked 178 prospective teachers to complete an emotion recognition task comprised of 72 children's facial expressions depicting six emotions and divided equally by race (Black, White) and gender (female, male). We also assessed implicit bias via the child race Implicit Association Test and explicit bias via questionnaire. Multilevel modeling revealed nuanced racialized emotion recognition accuracy with a race by gender interaction, but clear racialized anger bias toward both Black boys and girls. Both Black boys and Black girls were falsely seen as angry more often than White boys and White girls. Higher levels of either implicit or explicit bias did not increase odds of Black children being victim to anger bias, but instead decreased odds that White children would be misperceived as angry. Implications for addressing preexisting biases in teacher preparation programs and by children and parents are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The Interplay Between Parental Beliefs about Children's Emotions and Parental Stress Impacts Children's Attachment Security.

This study investigated how parental beliefs about children's emotions and parental stress relate to children's feelings of security in the parent-child relationship. Models predicting direct effects of parental beliefs and parental stress, and moderating effects of parental stress on the relationship between parental beliefs and children's feelings of security were tested. Participants were 85 African American, European American, and Lumbee American Indian 4(th) and 5(th) grade children and one of their parents. Children reported their feelings of security in the parent-child relationship; parents independently reported on their beliefs and their stress. Parental stress moderated relationships between three of the four parental beliefs about the value of children's emotions and children's attachment security. When parent stress was low, parental beliefs accepting and valuing children's emotions were not related to children's feelings of security; when parent stress was high, however, parental beliefs accepting and valuing children's emotions were related to children's feelings of security. These findings highlight the importance of examining parental beliefs and stress together for children's attachment security.

A positive-negative bifactor model for the Self-Expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire-Short Form.

The Self-Expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire (SEFQ) assesses an individual's emotional expressivity in the family context. However, neither the factor structure of the instrument, invariance by age and socioeconomic status (SES), nor substantial evidence for the construct validity of its short form (Self-Expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire-Short Form [SEFQ-SF]) has been established. Therefore, the goals of the present study were to: Conduct a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) for the SEFQ-SF, by testing five competing factorial models; ascertain the invariance of the measurement model across age groups and socioeconomic levels; and examine its convergent validity with a parenting-specific measure. A sociodemographic form, a Portuguese translation of the SEFQ-SF, and the Parent Emotion Regulation Scale (PERS) were administered online to 506 Portuguese mothers of children aged between 1 and 12 years old. The positive-negative bifactor model showed the best fit to the data, supporting the uncorrelated two-factor structure. In multigroup analyses, the measurement model was invariant across two age groups (mothers of toddlers/preschoolers vs. mothers of school-aged children) and socioeconomic levels (low-medium vs. high). Weak to strong correlations were observed between the SEFQ-SF positive-negative dimensions and the PERS subscales in the expected direction. The SEFQ-SF appears to be a reliable and valid measure, comprising two independent factors (positive and negative self-expressiveness within the family) that should be used as distinct subscales and eventually tested for their interaction effects. The invariance of this measurement model across age groups and socioeconomic levels is suggestive of the instrument's developmental suitability and cross-contextual applicability. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

And they all lived unhappily ever after: Positive and negative emotions in American and Russian picture books.

The U.S. and Russian cultural contexts are thought to foster different models of emotion, with the former emphasizing positive emotions more and negative emotions less than the latter. Little is known about the ways in which parents transmit these models of emotions to children. Cultural products, such as popular storybooks, may serve to provide important tools of transmission. Two studies examined similarities and differences in the extent to which children's books from these cultural contexts depict emotions. In Study 1, U.S., Russian American, and Russian parents described the extent to which books that they recently read to their children depict positive and negative emotions. Although no differences emerged for depictions of positive emotions, U.S. parents described reading books with lower levels of negative emotions than Russian parents, with Russian American parents in between. These differences were partially due to parental beliefs about sadness. In Study 2, verbal and nonverbal depictions of emotions were compared for sets of popular children's books from the U.S. and Russia. U.S. books verbally referenced anger and sadness and depicted happiness, anger, and fear faces less frequently than Russian books. Taken together, these studies suggest that American and Russian parents value and expose their children to different depictions of emotions, particularly negative emotions. Future studies need to examine the ways in which children in these cultural contexts interpret depictions of emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

PerCEIVED: Perceptions of children's emotions in videos, evolving and dynamic task.

Researchers have been studying emotion recognition skill for over 100 years (Feleky, 1914), yet technological advances continue to allow for the creation of better measures. Interest in consistent inaccuracies (sometimes described as bias) has also emerged recently. To support research in both emotion recognition skill and bias, we first describe all extant measures of emotion recognition with child actors that we have found, evaluating strengths and constraints of these measures. We then introduce a new measure of emotion understanding (Perceptions of Children's Emotions in Videos, Evolving and Dynamic task) that includes assessment of six emotions portrayed dynamically over rounds by 72 child actors, balancing child race and gender within each emotion, and certified by Facial Action Coding System coders. We provide participant accuracy and bias rates by round and within emotion, based on results from four studies (N = 477 adult participants), and report evidence for reliability over time, criterion and discriminant validity, and multidimensionality of emotion recognition from these studies. We conclude with potential uses of the measure in terms of assessing the accuracy and inaccuracies of participants, including opportunities for the study of developmental processes, individual differences, and confusions between various emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Beliefs About Children's Emotions in Chile.

To learn more about Chilean emotional beliefs related to emotion development, 271 Mapuche and non-Mapuche parents and teachers in urban and rural settings reported their emotion beliefs using a questionnaire invariant in the Chilean context (Riquelme et al., in press). Included are six beliefs previously found to resonate across three United States cultures (i.e., beliefs about the value and cost of certain emotions; control of emotion; knowledge of children's emotion; manipulation of emotion; and emotional autonomy), and five others distinctive to the indigenous people of this region (i.e., value of being calm; controlling fear specifically; interpersonality of emotion; learning about emotion from adults; and regulation through nature). MANOVAs were conducted to examine these beliefs across culture (Mapuche, non-Mapuche), role (parent, teacher), and geographical location (rural, urban). For United States-derived beliefs, there were no main effects, although two interactions with culture by role and location were significant. For all five Mapuche-generated beliefs, there were significant main effects for culture, role, and location. Results highlight both similarities and differences in beliefs across cultures, roles, and geographical location. Implications for the Chilean context include the importance of non-Mapuche teachers' sensitivity to the values and emotion-related beliefs of Mapuche families. Implications for the global context include an expanded view of emotion-related beliefs, including beliefs that children can control fear and be calm, that emotion-related values include attending to the needs of others, and that two ways of controlling emotion are through learning by listening to/watching elders, and by being in nature.

Teachers' Beliefs About Children's Anger and Skill in Recognizing Children's Anger Expressions.

Everyday beliefs often organize and guide motivations, goals, and behaviors, and, as such, may also differentially motivate individuals to value and attend to emotion-related cues of others. In this way, the beliefs that individuals hold may affect the socioemotional skills that they develop. To test the role of emotion-related beliefs specific to anger, we examined an educational context in which beliefs could vary and have implications for individuals' skill. Specifically, we studied 43 teachers' beliefs about students' anger in the school setting as well as their ability to recognize expressions of anger in children's faces in a dynamic emotion recognition task. Results revealed that, even when controlling for teachers' age and gender, teachers' belief that children's anger was useful and valuable in the school setting was associated with teachers' accuracy at recognizing anger expressions in children's faces. The belief that children's anger was harmful and not conducive to learning, however, was not associated with teachers' accuracy at recognizing children's anger expressions. These findings suggest that certain everyday beliefs matter for predicting skill in recognizing specific emotion-related cues.

Parent, family, and child characteristics: associations with mother- and father-reported emotion socialization practices.

The present research examined parental beliefs about children's negative emotions, parent-reported marital conflict/ambivalence, and child negative emotionality and gender as predictors of mothers' and fathers' reported reactions to their kindergarten children's negative emotions and self-expressiveness in the family (N = 55, two-parent families). Models predicting parents' nonsupportive reactions and negative expressiveness were significant. For both mothers and fathers, more accepting beliefs about children's negative emotions were associated with fewer nonsupportive reactions, and greater marital conflict/ambivalence was associated with more negative expressiveness. Furthermore, interactions between child negative emotionality and parental resources (e.g., marital conflict/ambivalence; accepting beliefs) emerged for fathers' nonsupportive reactions and mothers' negative expressiveness. In some instances, child gender acted as a moderator such that associations between parental beliefs about emotions and the emotion socialization outcomes emerged when child and parent gender were concordant.

Raising Grateful Children One Day at a Time.

The current study examined micro-developmental processes related to the socialization of children's gratitude. Specifically, we tested whether parents who engage in more frequent daily socialization practices targeting children's gratitude reported more frequent displays of gratitude by their children after controlling for potential confounds (i.e., parents' own gratitude, sensitive parenting, and children's socio-emotional functioning). The sample of 101 parent-child dyads completed a baseline lab visit followed by a seven-day diary study. Using multi-level modeling, we found that parents who engaged in more frequent gratitude socialization acts (versus parents with fewer socialization acts) reported more frequent displays of gratitude by their children across the seven-day period (a between-dyad effect). We also found that on days when a parent engaged in more socialization acts than usual (versus days when that parent engaged in fewer acts than usual) parents reported relative increases in gratitude displays by their children (a within-dyad effect). These findings show that parent socialization acts are associated with children's displayed gratitude and point to the need for future work to explore reactive and proactive parent-child interactions that may underlie these associations as well as associations between micro-developmental and macro-developmental processes.

Changing Tides: Mothers' Supportive Emotion Socialization Relates Negatively to Third-Grade Children's Social Adjustment in School.

Parents' supportive reactions to children's negative emotions are thought to promote children's social adjustment. Research heretofore has implicitly assumed that such reactions are equally supportive of children's adjustment across ages. Recent findings challenge this assumption, suggesting that during middle childhood, socialization practices previously understood as supportive may in fact impede children's social adjustment. We explored this possibility in a sample of 203 third-grade children and their mothers. Using structural equation modeling, we tested associations between mothers' supportive (i.e., problem- and emotion-focused) reactions to children's negative emotions and children's social skills and problems as reported by mothers and teachers. Mothers' supportive reactions predicted greater social adjustment in children as reported by mothers. Inverse associations, however, were found with teachers' reports of children's social adjustment: mothers' supportive reactions predicted fewer socioemotional skills and more problem behaviors. These contrasting patterns suggest potential unperceived costs associated with mothers' supportiveness of children's negative emotions for third-grade children's social adjustment in school and highlight the importance of considering associations between socialization practices and children's various social contexts. The findings also highlight a need for greater consideration of what supportiveness means across different developmental periods.

Bidirectional Linkages between Emotion Recognition and Problem Behaviors in Elementary School Children.

Cross-sectional studies support negative associations between children's skills in recognizing emotional expressions and their problem behaviors. Few studies have examined these associations over time, however, precluding our understanding of the direction of effects. Emotion recognition difficulties may contribute to the development of problem behaviors; additionally, problem behaviors may constrain the development of emotion recognition skill. The present study tested the bidirectional linkages between children's emotion recognition and teacher-reported problem behaviors in 1st and 3rd grade. Specifically, emotion recognition, hyperactivity, internalizing behaviors, and externalizing behaviors were assessed in 117 children in 1st grade and in 3rd grade. Results from fully cross-lagged path models revealed divergent developmental patterns: Controlling for concurrent levels of problem behaviors and first-grade receptive language skills, lower emotion recognition in 1st grade significantly predicted greater internalizing behaviors, but not hyperactivity or externalizing behaviors, in 3rd grade. Moreover, greater hyperactivity in 1st grade marginally predicted lower emotion recognition in 3rd grade, but internalizing and externalizing behaviors were not predictive of emotion recognition over time. Together, these findings extend previous research to identify specific developmental pathways, whereby emotion recognition difficulties contribute to the development of internalizing behaviors, and early hyperactivity may contribute to the development of emotion recognition difficulties, thus highlighting the importance of examining these processes and their mutual development over time.

Children's prototypic facial expressions during emotion-eliciting conversations with their mothers.

Despite theoretical claims that emotions are primarily communicated through prototypic facial expressions, empirical evidence is surprisingly scarce. This study aimed to (a) test whether children produced more components of a prototypic emotional facial expression during situations judged or self-reported to involve the corresponding emotion than situations involving other emotions (termed "intersituational specificity"), (b) test whether children produced more components of the prototypic expression corresponding to a situation's judged or self-reported emotion than components of other emotional expressions (termed "intrasituational specificity"), and (c) examine coherence between children's self-reported emotional experience and observers' judgments of children's emotions. One hundred and 20 children (ages 7-9) were video-recorded during a discussion with their mothers. Emotion ratings were obtained for children in 441 episodes. Children's nonverbal behaviors were judged by observers and coded by FACS-trained researchers. Children's self-reported emotion corresponded significantly to observers' judgments of joy, anger, fear, and sadness but not surprise. Multilevel modeling results revealed that children produced joy facial expressions more in joy episodes than nonjoy episodes (supporting intersituational specificity for joy) and more joy and surprise expressions than other emotional expressions in joy and surprise episodes (supporting intrasituational specificity for joy and surprise). However, children produced anger, fear, and sadness expressions more in noncorresponding episodes and produced these expressions less than other expressions in corresponding episodes. Findings suggest that communication of negative emotion during social interactions-as indexed by agreement between self-report and observer judgments-may rely less on prototypic facial expressions than is often theoretically assumed. (PsycINFO Database Record