DOI
https://doi.org/10.25772/AG1A-9B26
Defense Date
2009
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Michael Southam-Gerow
Abstract
The ability to effectively regulate one’s emotions has been linked with many aspects of well-being. However, disagreement in parents’ and children’s reports of children’s emotion regulation presents significant measurement and conceptual challenges. This investigation aimed to identify predictors of these discrepancies from among demographic, psychopathology, and child emotional awareness measures and to examine patterns of discrepancies among three emotion types (i.e., anger, sadness, and worry) and three regulation “strategies” (i.e., inhibition, dysregulated expression, and coping). Sixty-one mother-child dyads (41 girls, mean age 9.3 years) participated. As hypothesized, age, child and parent report of psychopathology, and poor emotion awareness all emerged as significant predictors of discrepancy. Additionally, discrepancies for inhibition subscales across all three emotions were of a larger magnitude than the other subscales; the effect was more pronounced for sadness than worry. Overall, the findings suggest patterns of disagreements are not random but rather may provide unique information that could elucidate relations among emotion regulation, psychopathology, and other indices of functioning.
Rights
© The Author
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
April 2009