The importance of both individual differences and dyadic processes in children’s emotion expression
Date
2023-01-06
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Applied Developmental Science
Abstract
Although children display strong individual differences in emotion expression, they also engage in emotional synchrony or reciprocity with interaction partners. To understand this paradox between trait-like and dyadic influences, the goal of the current study was to investigate children’s emotion expression using a Social Relations Model (SRM) approach. Playgroups consisting typically of four same-sex unfamiliar nine-year-old children (N = 202) interacted in a round-robin format (6 dyads per group). Each dyad completed two 5-minute tasks, a challenging frustration task and a cooperative planning task. Observers coded children’s emotions during the tasks (happy, sad, angry, anxious, neutral) on a second-by-second basis. SRM analyses provided substantial evidence of both the trait-like nature of children’s emotion expression (through significant effects for actor variance, multivariate actor-actor correlations, and multivariate intrapersonal correlations) and the dyadic nature of their emotion expression (through significant effects for partner variance, relationship variance, dyadic reciprocity correlations, and multivariate interpersonal correlations).
Description
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Applied Developmental Science on 01/06/2023, available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/10888691.2022.2163247. This article will be embargoed until 01/06/2024.
Keywords
emotion expression, peer interaction, Social Relations Model, individual differences, dyadic processes
Citation
Julie A. Hubbard, Christina C. Moore, Lindsay Zajac, Elizabeth Marano, Megan K. Bookhout & Mary Dozier (2023) The importance of both individual differences and dyadic processes in children’s emotion expression, Applied Developmental Science, DOI: 10.1080/10888691.2022.2163247