Cultural Variations in Mothers' Intuitive Theories: A Preliminary Report on Interviewing Mothers from Five Nations about Their Socialization of Children's Emotions

Abstract

Parental intuitive theories comprise values, goals, expectations, and cultural beliefs about the nature of parenting and its function for children's development of competence. This article introduces a research design to study mothers' intuitive theories about their socialization of children's emotions, as a means of understanding the cultural meaning of children's emotional development. The intention is not to present a traditional empirical report, but to provide a heuristic for future research. The authors illustrate the basic assumptions, methods, and approach to data analysis used in the research design, using a five-nation cross-cultural study as an example of this methodology. For purposes of illustration, examples of mothers' responses during interviews are included, about their intuitive theories of emotion socialization -that is, their attributions about child behavior, views about their parenting roles and socialization practices, and the salience of particular emotions relative to cultural models of independence and interdependence. This approach provides a more sophisticated sense of cultural similarities and variations within and between nations than has been available in prior research. The importance of parents' intuitive theories for the investigation of the cultural meaning of emotion socialization and future study directions are discussed.Intuitive 'theories' refer to implicit beliefs and assumptions about causal explanatory relations. 'They organize experience, generate inferences, guide learning, and influence behavior and social interactions ' (Gelman & Legare, 2011, p. 380). Though they are tacit and imprecise, they nonetheless influence behavior. We apply the concept of intuitive theories for a better understanding of parental socialization of children's emotions. We assume that one way that emotion socialization occurs in daily life is through parents' and other caregivers' practices, and that these practices are guided by their intuitive theories about child emotional competence, how different emotions are valued, and how they should be managed and expressed. We suggest that an intuitive theory approach can inform theories of emotional development, which have widely ignored the cultural variations in how children's emotions are socialized (Halberstadt & Lozada, 2011).Emotions are socialized in many contexts but in a child's early life parents are particularly important agents (Morris et al, 2007). From their birth, children are exposed to and slowly acquire culture-specific display rules for emotional expression, i.e. norms about when and where the expression of a specific emotion is socially accepted, through observational learning and modeling (Saarni et al, 2006). Moreover, in their dyadic interactions with their caregivers, children learn strategies to regulate emotions. In Western cultures, supportive parenting behaviors (e.g. expressive encouragement, problem-focused reactions) are associated with children's skills at regulating negative emotions (Davidov & Grusec, 2006) ...

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