Children’s emotional expressivity and teacher perceptions of social competence

Abstract

Previous research suggests that adult perceptions of children's social competence may vary depending on the socialization goals in a given cultural context. There is also ample evidence of cultural differences in values concerning emotional display, with East Asian collectivistic contexts favoring restraint and Western individualistic contexts favoring open expression of internal states. The present study examined an individualistic versus collectivistic comparison in the links between children's emotional expressivity and teacher evaluations of their social competence. A sample of 127 Korean, Asian American (AA) and European American (EA) preschoolers participated in emotion eliciting tasks and were rated by their teachers on three dimensions of social competence (peer acceptance, prosocial behavior, and antisocial behavior). Moderation analyses revealed that for Korean children, sadness and happiness expressivity were associated with higher antisocial behavior scores, but these associations were reversed or not significant for EAs. For AA children, anger display was associated with lower ratings of peer acceptance and prosocial behavior, but this link did not hold for their EA counterparts. Overall, there was some support for the hypotheses that expressivity was related to lower teacher perceptions of child social competence for a collectivistic group (AA and Korean) but not for an individualistic group (EA). Thus, these findings indicate cultural group differences in teacher perceptions and values of children's emotion expressivity.

Derse Bağlanma Üzerine Sosyokültürel Bir İnceleme

“…According to sociocultural perspective, there might be variations in defining, conceptualizing and measuring student engagement with respect to different cultural backgrounds. These findings are consistent with the contemporary researchers focusing on the role of cultural background within students' learning and engagement (Frisby, Slone and Bengu, 2016;Louie, Wang, Fung and Lau, 2015).…”

Internalising and Externalising Symptoms Before and During the Initial COVID-19 Lockdown in the UK and Turkey: A Cross-cultural Examination

“…Families in collectivist cultures may have perceived the con nement yet another prevention strategy to adhere to and as a result were more tolerant to its impact. Finally, collectivist child socialisation goals aim to promote obedience (Louie et al, 2015) may translate to more manageable child behaviour. Indeed, the rates of externalising behaviour were lower in the Turkish sample.…”

“…The differential impact of parenting stress could be explained by cultural differences. Collectivist culture prioritises group over individual harmony and child socialisation goals tend to promote restrain and inhibition (Chen-Bouck et al, 2019;Louie et al, 2015). Therefore, within a collectivist context, internalising behaviour as a response to the stresses of the lockdown could have been potentially perceived as adaptive and by extension acceptable insofar as it re ects social sensitivity and the dominant public emotional response.…”

Culture shapes preschoolers’ emotion recognition but not emotion comprehension: a cross-cultural study in Germany and Singapore

“…In contrast, both Singaporean and German preschoolers were better at recognizing emotions in European American faces. There is evidence that European American children express emotions more frequently and more intensively compared to East Asian children (Camras et al, 2006;Louie et al, 2014). Accordingly, Singaporean and German children may be more familiar with emotional expressions of European American faces, and thus, be more proficient in identifying emotions in European American children's faces.…”