A Research On Children's Emotional Display Rules And Its Relation With Family Emotional Expression

As one of the important parts of children's emotional socialization, children's emotional display rules (EDRs) have attracted more and more researchers'attention. Emotional display rules are a set of rules that individuals achieve during their socialization process. These rules could guide individuals express the social emotions as social expected in different situations. EDRs was mainly classified as three components: emotion regulation knowledge, emotion regulation goals and emotion regulation strategies. Emotion regulation knowledge represents the discrepancy between the character's internal feeling and external emotional expression; emotion regulation goals refer to children's developmental trends in the articulation of goal orientations. There are two types of goals:self protect goal and social orientation goal; emotion regulation strategies mean what kind of strategy children choose to follow their emotional display rules, and there are four kinds of strategies:neutralization, masking, minimization and maximization.121 participants were selected from 1st,3rd and 5th grade in a city primary school as the objectives in our research to explore the development traits of their EDRs and the relation with their parents'emotional expression. In study 1, we examined the cognitive development of children's EDRs in different emotion situation, grade and gender by interviewing children one by one. Based on the results of study 1, the influence of parents'emotional expression on children's EDRs was analyzed in study 2.The major findings in the above two studies are as follows:(1) The level of children's EDRs increased with age. From grade 1 to 5, children's EDRs developed fast, and after grade 5, the developing speed became lower. Girls reported more emotion regulation knowledge than boys. The scores of children's EDRs got the highest lever under the positive self-conscious emotions, and the lowest lever under the negative self-conscious emotions.(2) The emotion regulation goals of children were significant different by grade: the self protect goal developed quickly after grade 7; the social orientation goal developed fast from grade 1 to grade 3, then developed slowly from grade 3 to grade 7. Girls reported higher lever of the social orientation goal and more prosocial goals. The probability of the self protect goal's appearance became the highest under the basic positive emotions, and the lowest under the negative self-conscious emotions. The probability of the social orientation goal's appearance became the highest under the positive self-conscious emotions, and the lowest under the negative self-conscious emotions.(3) The most frequently used emotion regulation strategies was the masking, the least frequently used was maximization.The grade effect was significant in masking strategies. It developed fast from grade 1 to grade 3, then became more steadily, and then declined from grade 5 to grade 7. The sex effect was not significant. Masking was the least frequently used strategy under the basic positive emotions, and the most frequently used one under the positive self-conscious emotions.The grade effect is significant in neutralization strategies. It developed steadily from grade 1 to grade 5, and then ascended speedily from grade 5 to grade 7; the sex effect was not significant; Children use more neutralization strategies in positive emotion situation than negative emotion situation, and the most under the positive self-conscious emotions.(4) In family, father's emotional expression was consistent with mother's, and there were positive expressions than negative ones.(5) Parents'positive expression could predict significantly the emotion regulation knowledge regulation of child.(6) Mother's positive expression could predict positively the social orientation goal of child.