Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Adolescent Temperament, but Not Age or Gender, Is Associated with Parental Socialization of Positive Affect

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Journal of Child and Family Studies Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Objectives

Parents are a critical influence on adolescents’ expressions of positive affect (PA; happiness, excitement), which are important components of adaptive emotional development during this developmental period. Despite a recent proliferation of studies examining outcomes of parental response to PA, limited research has explored unique adolescent characteristics that relate to parents’ specific responses to adolescent PA. Thus, the current study examined the contribution of specific adolescent characteristics (temperament, age, and gender) on dampening and enhancing responses to PA.

Methods

Parents (n= 371, 49.6% mothers) of adolescents between ages 10 and 17 years (Mage = 13.5 years, 46.4% female) recruited thru Amazon Mechanical Turk completed a series of questionnaires on their offspring’s temperament and their enhancing and dampening responses to youth PA.

Results

Over and above parental age and gender, parent-reported adolescent positive emotionality and effortful control were uniquely related to dampening responses; however, all temperament dimensions were unrelated to enhancing responses. Adolescent age and gender were unrelated to parental PA socialization and did not moderate links between parent-reported temperament and parental dampening responses; however, there was a significant three-way inter action for temperament, age and gender for parental enhancing responses.

Conclusions

Overall the findings suggest that adolescents low in effortful control and positive emotionality elicit more parental dampening responses to PA. Future research is needed to clarify the factors that contribute to parents’ enhancing of PA.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Ansari, A., & Crosnoe, R. (2015). Children’s elicitation of changes in parenting during the early childhood years. Early Child Res Quarterly, 32, 139–149.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baker, J. K., Fenning, R. M., & Crnic, K. A. (2011). Emotion socialization by mothers and fathers: Coherence among behaviors and associations with parent attitudes and children’s social competence. Social Development, 20, 412–430.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Belsky, J. (1984). The determinants of parenting: A process model. Child Development, 55, 83–96.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Blakemore, S.-J. (2008). Development of the social brain during adolescence. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61, 40–49.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brody, G. H., & Ge, X. (2001). Linking parenting processes and self-regulation to psychological functioning and alcohol use during early adolescence. Journal of Family Psychology, 15, 82–94.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bryant, F. B., & Veroff, J. (2007). Savoring: A new model of positive experience. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cassano, M., Perry-Parrish, C., & Zeman, J. (2007). Influence of gender on parental socialization of children’s sadness regulation. Social Development, 16, 210–231.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chandler, J., Mueller, P., & Paolacci, G. (2014). Nonnaïveté among Amazon Mechanical Turk workers: Consequences and solutions for behavioral researchers. Behavior Research Methods, 46, 112–130.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Chaplin, T. M. (2015). Gender and emotion expression: A developmental contextual perspective. Emotion Review, 7, 14–21.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Chaplin, T. M., & Aldao, A. (2013). Gender differences in emotion expression in children: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 139, 735–765.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Chaplin, T. M., Cole, P. M., & Zahn-Waxler, C. (2005). Parental socialization of emotion expression: Gender differences and relations to child adjustment. Emotion, 5, 80–88.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Collins, W. A., Maccoby, E. E., Steinberg, L., Hetherington, E. M., & Bornstein, M. H. (2000). Contemporary research on parenting: The case for nature and nurture. American Psychologist, 55, 218–232.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Coplan, R. J., Reichel, M., & Rowan, K. (2009). Exploring the associations between maternal personality, child temperament, and parenting: A focus on emotions. Personality and Individual Differences, 46, 241–246.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davenport, E., Yap, M. B., Simmons, J. G., Sheeber, L. B., & Allen, N. B. (2011). Maternal and adolescent temperament as predictors of maternal affective behavior during mother–adolescent interactions. Journal of Adolescence, 34, 829–839.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Davidov, M., & Grusec, J. E. (2006). Untangling the links of parental responsiveness to distress and warmth to child outcomes. Child Development, 77, 44–58.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • De Los Reyes, A., & Kazdin, A. E. (2005). Informant discrepancies in the assessment of childhood psychopathology: a critical review, theoretical framework, and recommendations for further study. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 483–509.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Dworkin, J., Hessel, H., Gliske, K., & Rudi, J. H. (2016). A comparison of three online recruitment strategies for engaging parents. Family Relations, 65, 550–561.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Eisenberg, N., Cumberland, A., & Spinrad, T. L. (1998). Parental socialization of emotion. Psychological Inquiry, 9, 241–273.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R. A., & Murphy, B. C. (1996). Parents’ reactions to children’s negative emotions: Relations to children's social competence and comforting behavior. Child Development, 67, 2227–2247.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R. A., Shepard, S. A., Guthrie, I. K., Murphy, B. C., & Reiser, M. (1999). Parental reactions to children’s negative emotions: Longitudinal relations to quality of children’s social functioning. Child Development, 70, 513–534.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, L. K., & Rothbart, M. K. (2001). Revision of the early adolescent temperament questionnaire. In Poster presented at the 2001 biennial meeting of the society for research in child development, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

  • Else-Quest, N. M., Hyde, J. S., Goldsmith, H. H., & Van, Hulle (2006). Gender differences in temperament: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 33–72.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fabes, R. A., Leonard, S. A., Kupanoff, K., & Martin, C. L. (2001). Parental coping with children’s negative emotions: Relations with children’s emotional and social responding. Child Development, 72, 907–920.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fortier, M. A., Martin, S. R., Chorney, J. M., Mayes, L. C., & Kain, Z. N. (2011). Preoperative anxiety in adolescents undergoing surgery: A pilot study. Pediatric Anesthesia, 21, 969–973.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fredrick, J. W., Mancini, K. J., & Luebbe, A. M. (2018). Maternal enhancing responses to adolescents’ positive affect: Associations with adolescents’ positive affect regulation and depression. Social Development. https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12326.

  • Gentzler, A. L., Ramsey, M. A., & Black, K. R. (2015). Mothers’ attachment styles and their children’s self-reported security, as related to maternal socialization of children’s positive affect regulation. Attachment & Human Development, 17, 376–398.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gentzler, A. L., Ramsey, M. A., Yi, C. Y., Palmer, C. A., & Morey, J. N. (2013). Young adolescents’ emotional and regulatory responses to positive life events: Investigating temperament, attachment, and event characteristics. Journal of Positive Psychology, 9, 108–121.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gilbert, K. E. (2012). The neglected role of positive emotion in adolescent psychopathology. Clinical PsychologyReview, 32, 467–481.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gomez-Baya, D., Mendoza, R., Paino, S., & Gillham, J. E. (2017). A two-year longitudinal study of gender differences in responses to positive affect and depressive symptoms during middle adolescence. Journal of Adolescence, 56, 11–23.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Havinghurst, S. S., Kehoe, C. E., & Harley, A. E. (2015). Tuning in to teens: Improving parental responses to anger and reducing youth externalizing behavior problems. Journal of Adolescence, 42, 148–158.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hunter, E. C., Katz, L. F., Shortt, J. W., Davis, B., Leve, C., Allen, N. B., & Sheeber, L. B. (2011). How do I feel about feelings? Emotion socialization in families of depressed and healthy adolescents. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 40, 428–441.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ivanova, K., Mills, M., & Veenstra, R. (2011). The initiation of dating in adolescence: The effect of parental divorce. The TRAILS study. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 21, 769–775.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jones, S., Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R. A., & MacKinnon, D. P. (2002). Parents’ reactions to elementary school children’s negative emotions: Relations to social and emotional functioning at school. Merrill Palmer Quarterly, 48, 133–159.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Karkhanis, D. G., & Winsler, A. (2016). Temperament, gender, and cultural differences in maternal emotion socialization of anxiety, somatization, and anger. Psychological Studies, 61, 137–158.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kärtner, J., Crafa, D., Chaudhary, N., & Keller, H. (2016). Reactions to receiving a gift—Maternal scaffolding and cultural learning in Berlin and Delhi. Child Development, 87, 712–722.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Katz, L. F., Shortt, J. W., Allen, N. B., Davis, B., Hunter, E., Leve, C., & Sheeber, L. (2014). Parental emotion socialization in clinically depressed adolescents: Enhancing and dampening positive affect. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 42, 205–215.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Kehoe, C. E., Havinghurst, S. S., & Harley, A. E. (2014). Tuning into Teens: Improving parent emotion socialization to reduce youth internalizing difficulties. Social Development, 23, 413–431.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kiff, C. J., Lengua, L. J., & Zalewski, M. (2011). Nature and nurturing: Parenting in the context of child temperament. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 14, 251–301.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Klimes‐Dougan, B., Brand, A. E., Zahn‐Waxler, C., Usher, B., Hastings, P. D., Kendziora, K., & Garside, R. B. (2007). Parental emotion socialization in adolescence: Differences in gender, age and problem status. Social Development, 16, 326–342.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Komsi, N., Räikkönen, K., Heinonen, K., Pesonen, A. K., Keskivaara, P., Järvenpää, A. L., & Strandberg, T. E. (2008). Transactional development of parent personality and child temperament. European Journal of Personality, 22, 553–573.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Larson, R., Richards, M., Holmbeck, G., Duckett, E., & Moneta, G. (1996). Changes in adolescents’ daily interactions with their families from ages 10 to 18: Disengagement and transformation. Developmental Psychology, 32, 744–754.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Laursen, B., Coy, K. C., & Collins, W. A. (1998). Reconsidering changes in parent-child conflict across adolescence: A meta-analysis. Child Development, 69, 817–832.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Lengua, L. J. (2006). Growth in temperament and parenting as predictors of adjustment during children’s transition to adolescence. Developmental Psychology, 42, 819–832.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Lengua, L., & Kovacs, E. (2005). Bidirectional associations between temperament and parenting and the prediction of adjustment problems in middle childhood. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 26, 21–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lengua, L. J., & Long, A. C. (2002). The role of emotionality and self-regulation in the appraisal–coping process: Tests of direct and moderating effects. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 23, 471–493.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Luebbe, A. M., & Bell, D. J. (2014). Positive and negative family emotional climate differentially predict youth anxiety and depression via distinct affective pathways. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 42, 897–911.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lunkenheimer, E. S., Shields, A. M., & Cortina, K. S. (2007). Parental emotion coaching and dismissing in family interaction. Social Development, 16, 232–248.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McKee, L. G., Faro, A. L., O’Leary, J. L., Spratt, K. H., & Jones, D. J. (2015). Socializing positive emotion: A qualitative study of African American single mothers and their adolescent youth. Family Relations, 64, 635–650.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mirabile, S. P. (2014). Parents’ inconsistent emotion socialization and children’s socioemotional adjustment. Journalof Applied Developmental Psychology, 35, 392–400.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moilanen, K. L., Rasmussen, K. E., & Padilla‐Walker, L. M. (2015). Bidirectional associations between self‐regulation and parenting styles in early adolescence. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 25, 246–262.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morris, A. S., Silk, J. S., Steinberg, L., Myers, S. S., & Robinson, L. R. (2007). The role of the family context in the development of emotion regulation. Social Development, 16, 361–388.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Muris, P., & Meesters, C. (2009). Reactive and regulative temperament in youths: Psychometric evaluation of the early adolescent temperament questionnaire-revised. Journal of Psychopathology & Behavioral Assessment, 31, 7–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nelson, J. A., O’Brien, M., Blankson, A. N., Calkins, S. D., & Keane, S. P. (2009). Family stress and parental responses to children’s negative emotions: Tests of the spillover, crossover, and compensatory hypotheses. Journal of Family Psychology, 23, 671–679.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Ng, F. F., Pomerantz, E. M., & Lam, S. (2007). European American and Chinese parents’ responses to children’s success and failure: Implications for children’s responses. Developmental Psychology, 43, 1239–1255.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • O’Neal, C. R., & Magai, C. (2005). Do parents respond in different ways when children feel different emotions? The emotional context of parenting. Development and Psychopathology, 17, 467–487.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Panjuani, N., Chaplin, T. M., Sinha, R., & Mayes, L. C. (2016). Gender differences in emotion expression in low-income adolescents under stress. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 40, 117–132.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Prinzie, P., Ongena, P., Hellinckx, W., Grietens, H., Ghesquiere, P., & Coplin, H. (2004). Parent and child personality characteristics as predictors of negative discipline and externalizing problem behavior in children. European Journal of Personality, 18, 73–102.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Putnam, S. P., Ellis, L. K., & Rothbart, M. K. (2001). The structure of temperament from infancy through adolescence. In A. Eliasz & A. Angleitner (Eds.), Advances in research on temperament (pp. 165–182). Rockledge, FL: Pabst Science Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ramsey, M., & Gentzler, A. (2015). An upward spiral: Bidirectional associations between positive affect and positive aspects of close relationships across the life span. Developmental Review, 36, 58–104.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Raval, V. V., Li, X., Deo, N., & Hu, J. (2018). Reports of maternal socialization goals, emotion socialization behaviors, and child functioning in China and India. Journal of Family Psychology, 32, 81–91.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ross, J., Irani, L., Silberman, M., Zaldivar, A., & Tomlinson, B. (2010). Who are the crowdworkers?: Shifting demographics in Mechanical Turk. Presented at ACM in Atlanta, GA, CHI'10 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, 2863–2872.

  • Rothbart, M. K., Ahadi, S. A., & Evans, D. E. (2000). Temperament and personality: Origins and outcomes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 122–135.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Snyder, J., Stoolmiller, M., Wilson, M., & Yamamoto, M. (2003). Child anger regulation, parental responses to children’s anger displays, and early child antisocial behavior. Social Development, 12, 335–360.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sanders, W., Zeman, J., Poon, J., & Miller, R. (2015). Child regulation of negative emotions and depressive symptoms: The moderating role of parental emotion socialization. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24, 402–415.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Silk, J. S., Shaw, D. S., Prout, J. T., O'Rourke, F., Lane, T. J., & Kovacs, M. (2011). Socialization of emotion and offspring internalizing symptoms in mothers with childhood-onset depression. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 32, 127–136.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Snyder, H. R., Gulley, L. D., Bijttebier, P., Hartman, C. A., Oldehinkel, A. J., Mezulis, A., & Hankin, B. L. (2015). Adolescent emotionality and effortful control: Core latent constructs and links to psychopathology and functioning. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109, 1132–1149.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Stepp, S. D., Whalen, D. J., Scott, L. N., Zalewski, M., Loeber, R., & Hipwell, A. E. (2014). Reciprocal effects of parenting and borderline personality disorder symptoms in adolescent girls. Development and Psychopathology, 26, 361–378.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Thomassin, K., & Suveg, C. (2014). Reciprocal positive affect and well-regulated, adjusted children: A unique contribution of fathers. Parenting, 14, 28–46.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tiberio, S. S., Capaldi, D. M., Kerr, D. C., Bertrand, M., Pears, K. C., & Owen, L. (2016). Parenting and the development of effortful control from early childhood to early adolescence: A transactional developmental model. Development and Psychopathology, 28, 837–853.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Urry, H. L., & Gross, J. J. (2010). Emotion regulation in older age. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19, 352–357.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yap, M. B., Allen, N. B., & Ladouceur, C. D. (2008a). Maternal socialization of positive affect: the impact of invalidation on adolescent emotion regulation and depressive symptomatology. Child Development, 79, 1415–1431.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Yap, M. B., Allen, N. B., Leve, C., & Katz, L. F. (2008b). Maternal meta-emotion philosophy and socialization of adolescent affect: The moderating role of adolescent temperament. Journal of Family Psychology, 22, 688–700.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Yi, C. Y., Gentzler, A. L., Ramsey, M. A., & Root, A. E. (2016). Linking maternal socialization of positive emotions to children’s behavioral problems: The moderating role of self-control. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 25, 1550–1558.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

A.M.L. was funded by the Robert H. and Nancy J. Blayney Professorship during the time of this work. Funds for the research were provided by the College of Arts and Science, Miami University.

Author Contributions

A.N. designed and executed the study, assisted with data analyses and contributed to writing the paper. J.F. assisted with data analyses and contributed to writing the paper. A.L. collaborated with study design, assisted with data analyses and interpretation, and contributed to editing the paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Miami University, 90 N. Patterson Avenue, Oxford, OH, 45056, USA

    Alex C. Nyquist, Joseph W. Fredrick & Aaron M. Luebbe

Authors
  1. Alex C. Nyquist
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Joseph W. Fredrick
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Aaron M. Luebbe
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alex C. Nyquist.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Additional information

Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Nyquist, A.C., Fredrick, J.W. & Luebbe, A.M. Adolescent Temperament, but Not Age or Gender, Is Associated with Parental Socialization of Positive Affect. J Child Fam Stud 28, 1524–1536 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-019-01379-8

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-019-01379-8

Keywords

Search

Navigation