Parental frameworks of pleasure and pride

INFANT

BEHAVIOR

AND

DEVELOPMENT

13,

249-256

4 1990)

BRIEF REPORT

Parental

Frameworks of Pleasure and Pride NADJA REISSLAND University of Oxford

Seventeen mothers, whose infonts ronged in oge from 2 to 15 months, were osked to elicit in their children o simple emotion lpleosuref and o complex one fpridel. Most of the mothers (15/l 71 believed thot this could be done. An analysis of the mothers’ elicitotions reveoled the existence of behavior01 fromeworks that were differentiated both with regard to the emotion as well OS the age of the infant. Mothers mode young infonts happy by letting them respond passively to their action. Older infants were made happy by being given the role of partner in a game with estoblished rules. When trying to elicit pride, mothers of young infants performed an action ond in their praise attributed the action to the infant. Older infants were given the opportunity to perform an action and were praised for it. An analysis of the infants’ responses revealed that they behaved similarly when their mothers elicited the simple and complex emotions.

parental

frameworks

emotional

development

pride

pleasure

Researchershave suggestedthat children learn to express emotions by coming to understand the link between emotion and situation (Camras, 1986; Gnepp, 1983; Reichenbach & Masters, 1983) and that parents actively foster this understanding by attributing intentions to their children’s emotional expressions(Kaye, 1982; Wolff, 1987; Dix & Grusec, 1985). Kaye (1982) argued that adults actively shape their infant’s emotional expressionby showing slow-paced,exaggeratedexpressionsof emotions. Exaggeratedfacial expressionsare an especially relevant method of learning between 3 and 6 months (Malatesta & Haviland, 1982); vocal expressionsalso play an important role in shaping affective expressions, especially in preverbal infants who cannot yet imitate words but who imitate phonetic contours &aver, 1980; Scherer, 1982;Trevarthen, 1977). With regard to behavioral expressions,Kaye (1982) suggestedfurther that parents construct social frameworks around the infant, within which an The a grant

research on which this article is based was carried out at the University from the Saciol Science Research Council, U.K. I thank Paul Harris and

for supporting me in this project. The present article Symposium on Social Cognition and Self-Perception December, 1988. The author is currently affiliated Correspondence and requests lnstitut der UniversitBt Heidelberg,

of Oxford with Richard Burghart

wos originolly contributed to the International in Infancy held at the University of Ghent with the University of Heidelberg.

far reprints should be sent to Nadfo Reisslond, Psychafagfsches Houpstrasse 47-51, 6900 Heidelberg, Federal Republic

in

of

Germany.

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infant’s actions are interpreted in a meaningful manner (see also Wolff, 1987). AS the infant matures cognitively and socially, his or her role played within the framework becomes less controlled by the parent. By attributing to the infants the ability to expressmore subtle variation in emotion than they can actually show, parents pace the infant to achieve more subtlety. The present study was designedto elucidate the parental frameworks in which infants learn about pleasureand pride. A working definition of pleasure, assumed to be present in all infants studied, is the simplest expressionof happiness.Such pleasurecan already be observedin 2-weekold infants smiling at an environmental stimulus, such as a human voice (Wolff, 1987).Pride, defined here as a complex form of pleasure,appears later in child development (Izard, 1977, 1978) and might not yet be in the repertoire of the infants studied. According to Taylor (1980), pride concernsthe status of self. It follows that children who show pride must possess,what Wylie (1961) has called, a conceptof self as object. Similarly, Eisenberg(1986) argued that self-evaluative emotions, such as pride and guilt, differ from empathetic emotions in that they are evokedby evaluation of one’s own behavior, and not by the evaluation of another person’s emotional state. It is in its selfevaluative characterthat pride differs from pleasure, and in its positive valency that it differs from shame. Hence, in order to expresspleasure,the infant has to be capable of recognizing the positive aspect of a given context; and in order to expresspride, the infant must be aware of his or her position in the world, in terms of self-worth, however inarticulate it might be. Following Kaye (1982), one would expect that parents create different frameworks for pleasure as compared with pride. Seventeenmothers-white, middle class, English housewivesliving in or near Oxford-were subjects in this study. They were recruited from various playgrounds and were selectedon the basis of their having young infants ranging in age from 2 months to 15 months (M age= 9 months; SD = 3.7 months). The mothers were asked whether they could make their infant happy or proud. If a mother answeredaffirmatively, she was asked to get her infant’s attention and to elicit the emotion in her infant. Fifteen mothers claimed that they could elicit pride and pleasurein their infant in front of the experimenter. Only two mothers (of a 3-month-old and a 6-month-old girl) said that their infant could not yet show pride. The order of eliciting emotions was varied so that approximately half the mothers tried first to elicit pleasureand half to elicit pride. The families were videotaped in their homes in as unintrusive a manner as possible. The camera was installed in a comer of the room, focussedon the mother and child seatedopposite on the floor, and left running throughout the entire play session.The video recordings of 10 infants (5 boys, 5 girls), ranging in age from 6 to 13 months (44 age= 9.5 months; SD = 2.5

PARENTAL

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251

months) were of sufficient quality to allow a behavioral analysis. The behavioral data were coded from the time the infant attended to the mother to the time the infant turned his/her attention to a different aspect of the situation. Parental

Frames

Kaye (1982) distinguished between two types of parental frameworks: instrumental frames, in which the adult carries out what appears to be the infant’s intention, such as handing the infant a rattle which he/she seemedto reach for, and feedback frames, which provide a set of consequencesfor the child, more consistent or salient than the physical world itself would provide, such as handing the infant a rattle and praising he or she for having graspedit. These frameworks informed the classification of the mother’s behavior into the following two exhaustive and exclusive categories:(a) the mother acts upon or interacts with her infant in a positive way, without offering praise; and (b) the mother praises her infant for a real or imputed action. The reliability of the classification of parental behavior into either one of these two frames resulted in all casesin the agreement of the experimenter and independentjudge. Basedon this coding scheme,the mothers’ situational frameworks for eliciting pride and pleasurewere compared. A McNemar test for significanceof changeswas used to test the hypothesis that the 15 mothers used different methods in eliciting pride and pleasure in their infants. The selectivity of the mothers’ behavior differentiating between pride and pleasure elicitation proved significant using the McNemar’s x2 (1, N= 15)= 13, p < .OOl. In demonstrating how they would elicit theseemotions in their infants, the 15 mothers elicited pleasureeither by physically stimulating the infants, such as by talking and jiggling, kissing, cuddling, tickling or throwing him or her into the air, or by playing a game with well-defined rules, such as the game of peek-a-boo,pat-a-cake,or row-a-boat. By contrast, pride was elicited by praising the infant’s actions (12 mothers out of 15). Examples of these two frameworks are given in Table 1. Kaye (1982) suggestedthat parents not only vary their frameworks to elicit different responsesbut also adjust their frameworks to the age of their child. Hence, the next problem was to discover whether there was an age-relateddifference in the choice of parental framework. For that purposeeachof the two frameworks, used above,was subdivided, resulting in four exhaustive and exclusive categories:(a) the mother performs m action to which the infant reacts(e.g.,mother cuddles or tickles the infant; the infant laughs);(b) the infant and mother mutually interact, eachtaking turns in acting and reacting to the other (e.g., the game of peek-a-boo); (c) the mother performs an action which she imputes to the infant and then praises or at least reacts positively to this imputed action (e.g.,

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mother places a piece of puzzle into a puzzle board and praisesthe infant for having done it); and (d) the mother reacts positively by praising the infant’s action (e.g., the infant pulls the handle of a toy, producing a sound, for which the mother offers praise). The reliability for the coding schemeof parentalframeworks, established between the experimenter and an independentjudge, was 100%for Categories 1 and 2 and 88.4% for Categories3 and 4. With regard to the elicitation of pleasure, the subjects classified in Category 1 or 2 were ranked by age. Meddis (1984) has developed a statistic H, approximately distributed as a chi-square, which takes into account the moderate dependencebetweenthe rank sums of two or more groups. If no advance prediction is made of the direction of the ranks, the more conservativenonspecificapproximate rank test should be applied. Here the agesare ranked irrespective of the sample and the two sample rank sums are found by totalling the ranks (R) of the two columns. The agesof the children classified in Category 1 (n = 6, R = 66.5) or 2 (n = 9, R = 53.5), when subjected to the nonspecific approximate rank test, were significantly different, H’ (correctionfor ties = 0.98)= 11.55,p < .Ol. Hence, in order to make children happy, mothers tended to physically stimulate the younger infants of mean age 7.4 months, thus giving the infants a passiverole. Older infants of mean age 11.8months, however,were made active partners in a game with well-establishedrules. With regard to the elicitation of pride, the ages of children classified in Category 3 (n = 11, R = 106) or 4 (n = 4, R = 14), when subjected to a nonspecific approximate rank test, were significantly different, H’ (correction for ties = 0.98) = 5.61, p < .025. In sum, mothers varied their behavioral frameworks according to the ageof their child. For the younger infants of mean age 5.75 months, mothers tended to perform an activity themselves, impute it to the infant, and then praise the infant for having accomplished the imputed activity. Older children of mean age 11.1 months, however, were required to perform the activity themselves,such as pulling the handle of a pull toy or “posting” the correct shapesthrough differently shapedholes of a “post-box.” Upon performing the action, the mother praised the child. Infant

Behavioral

Reactions

Having establishedthat parents vary their frameworks according to both the elicited emotion and their child’s age, it would be appropriate to observewhether the children themselvesvaried their behavior in response to each framework. Becausebehavioral displays, as emotional indicators, changetheir meaning with the ageof the child as well as with the context in which they are expressed(Kagan, 1981; Lewis & Michalson, 1983; McGrew, 1972; Saami, 1979), it seemedsensible to resort to a range of indicators, not only of facial behavior but also of gesturesand postures.

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Four behavioral domains, containing 10 specific behaviors which have been found in other studies to be important for the communication of emotional states,were selectedfor analysis. These were gaze: look at adult or look at sib (Exline & Fehr, 1982; Haith & Campos, 1977; Stern, 1974); gesture:reach for mother/toy, act on mother/toy, raise arms (Birdwhistell, 1973;Brannigan& Humphries, 1972;Trevarthen, 1986);faciaI expressions: neutral emotion, tense face, and smile (Collier, 1985; Ekrnan & Gster, 1979);and postural responses (Collier, 1985):touch body and tense torso. A similar approachhas beenusedby McGrew (1972),Lewis and Michalson (1983), and others. The infants’ behavioral responseswere coded by the experimenter and an independentjudge. The presenceor absenceof each of the 10 infant behaviors was coded throughout the entire episode, at time intervals of one-fifth of a second,and the relative frequency of the occurrenceof each of the 10 behaviors was calculated in order to make the episodes comparable. The start of each episode was defined by the mother eliciting a responsefrom her attentive infant, and the end was defined by the infant turning his or her attention to a different aspect of the situation. The happy episode lasted a mean of 7.25, range 4 to 12; the pride episode lasted a mean of 9.45, range 4 to 16. The difference in length of the situations when subjectedto a t test was nonsignificant, t(9) = 1.01,p < .33. The reliability for the infants’ behavior was establishedby calculating the percentageof agreementbetweenthe experimenter and the independent judge in their coding of the 10 behaviorsin the following way: The number of agreementswas divided by the sum of the number of agreementsand disagreements.The percentageof agreement between experimenter and judge in the coding of behaviors was as follows: touch body: 100%; tense torso: 69%; neutral emotion: 69%; tense face: 100%;smile: 90%; reach for mother/toy: 87%; act on mother/toy: 89%; raise arms: 96%; look at adult: 92%; look at sib: 98%. Two matched groups were subjectedto a Wilcoxon Matched Pairs Signed Rank test. If the subjects’ scoreswere dependent on situations, then the rank totals would vary from one column to the next. The Wilcoxon Matched Pairs Test for the relative mean frequency of the 10 behaviors exhibited by the two matched groups in the pleasureeliciting situation (M = 25.60,SD = 33.34)and the pride-eliciting situation (M= 22.36, SD= 24.55), T= 18, N= 10, n.s., was similar. The children behavedsimilarly regardlessof whether their mother tried to elicit pleasure or pride. How do parents convey to their infants the difference between two positive emotions of varying complexity? From this study it would seem that parents provide social frameworks which they change not only according to the emotion they intend to elicit but also according to their perception of their child’s maturity. With regard to the elicitation of

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pleasure, younger infants (M age= 7.4 months) were made happy by placing them in a passive role responding to their mother’s action. At mean age 11.8 months, infants were given the role of partner in a game with established rules. With regard to the elicitation of pride, the mothers seemedto demand from their child his or her best performance in order to deserve praise and legitimately expresspride. Hence, the older children (M age= 11.1 months), who were more capable than the younger ones (M age= 5.7 months), had at least to make an effort to accomplish some set task. How can one explain that infants, despite the different frameworks, behaved similarly in the two situations? One explanation would be that the infants focussed precisely on that aspect of the parental framework which expressedthe similarity between the two positive emotions rather than the difference in complexity of the two positive emotions. In both situations, mothers interacted positively with their infants, giving them their undivided attention, praising them, or acknowledgingtheir actions. Thus, it is likely that infants of mean age9.5 months respondedpositively to the fact that they were the center of attention rather than listening to the verbal nuance of being praised in one situation and their action being acknowledgedin the other. Further researchon the ability of infants to distinguish betweensimple and complex emotions might be directed toward the development in the child’s perception of a difference between pleasure- and pride-eliciting TABLE Six Examples 6 months-boy

Proud Happy

6 months-boy

Proud

of

Maternal Mother cleverl” Mother

I

Frameworks

for

makes

him

stand:

tickles

his stomach,

Pleasure

and

“Good

Pride

boy,

saying:

good

boy,

aren’t

you

“brrr-brrr.”

Happy

Mother operates activity center, saying, “Oh you you a clever boy to do thot. Are you o clever Mother tickles him, saying, “tickle, tickle, ticklel”

8 months-boy

Proud Happy

Mother Mother

9 months-girl

Proud Happy

Mother helps her to stond up, soying, “Clever girll” The child stands up ond the mother comments that she is happy

11 months-girl

Proud Happy

helps him to get on his knees lifts him in the air, saying, “Oh

did that; boyl”

aren’t

“What a clever boyl” Georgie, Oh Georgiel”

now. Mother Mother bar,” 12 months-boy

plays tickles and

pat-a-cake: her with

her

“What heod

a good girll” on her stomach,

saying

“brrr-

laughs.

Proud

Mother

makes

Happy

clever Mother

boy]” dances

him stand with

him,

on his own: singing:

“Stand “di-di-di,

up, stand di-di-di,

up, yeah, di-di,

di-di,

PARENTAL

FRAMEWORKS

255

frameworks. From the present study, it can be concluded that parents use different frameworks in which they elicit pleasure and pride in their infant and that these frameworks are adjusted according to parental perceptions of their infant’s developing senseof agency. REFERENCES Birdwhistell, E.L. (1973). Kinesics and context: Essays on body motion communication. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Brannigan, C.R., & Humphries, D.A. (1972). Human non-verbal behaviour: A means of communication. In N. Blurton-Jones (Ed.), Ethoiogical studies o/ child behaviour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Camras, L.A. (1986). Judging emotion: Facial expression and context. In C.E. Izard & P.B. Read (Eds.), Measuring emotions in infants and children (Vol. 2). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Collier, G. (1985). Emotional expressions. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Dix, T.H., & Grusec, J.E. (I 985). Parent attribution processes in the socialization of children. In I.E. Sigel (Ed.), Parental belief systems: The psychological consequences for children. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Eisenberg, N. (I 986). Altruistic emotion, cognition. and behaviour. New York: Academic. Ekman, P. & Oster, H. ( 1979). Facial expressions of emotions. Annual Review of Psychology, 30, 527-554. Exline, R.V., & Fehr, B.J. (1982). The assessment of gaze and mutual gaze. In K.R. Scherer & P. Ekman (Eds.), Handbook o/methods in non-verbal behaviour research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gnepp, J. (1983). Children’s social sensitivity: Inferring emotions from conflicting cues. Developmental Psychology, 35, 805-8 14. Haith, M., & Campos, J. (1977). Human infancy. Annual Review ofPsychology, 28, 25 l-293. Izard, C.E. (1977). Human emofions. New York: Plenum. Izard, C.E. (1978). On the ontogenesis of emotions and emotion-cognition relationships in infancy. In M. Lewis & L.A. Rosenblum (Eds.), The development ofaject. New York: Plenum. Kagan, J. ( I98 I). The second year: The emergence ofselfawareness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kaye, K. (I 982). The mental and social Ii@ of babies: How parents create persons. Brighton: Harvester Press. Laver, J. (I 980). The phonetic description o/voice quality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewis, M., & Michalson, L. (I 983). Children’s emotions and moods. New York: plenum. Malatesta, C.Z., & Haviland, J.M. (1982). Learning display rules: The socialization ofemotion expression in infancy. Child Development, 53, 991-1003. McGrew, W.L. (I 972). An ethological study of children’s behaviour. New York: Academic. Meddis, R. (1984). Statistics using ranks: A unified approach. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Reichenbach, L.C., & Masters, J.C. (I 983). Children’s use of expressive and contextual cues in judgement of emotion. Child Development, 54, 993-1004. Saami, C. (1979). Children’s understanding of display rules for expressing behaviour. Developmental Psychology, IS, 424-429. Scherer, K. (1982). Methods of research on vocal communications: Paradigms and parameters. In K.R. Scherer & P. Ekman (Eds.), Handbook of methods in nonverbal behavior research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Stem, D. (1974). Mother and infant at play: The dyadic interaction involving facial, vocal and gaze behaviours. In M. Lewis & L. Rosenblum (Eds.), The effect of the infant on the caregiver. New York: Wiley. Taylor, G. (1980). Pride. In A.O. Rorty (Ed.), Explaining emotions. Berkeley: University of California Press. Trevarthen, C. (1977). Descriptive analyses of infant communicative behaviour. In H.R. Schaffer (Ed.), Studies in mother-infant interaction. London: Academic. Trevarthen, C. (1986, September). Functional brain assymmetries in infants. Evidence from expressive hand movements. Presented at the Second European Conference on Developmental Psychology, Rome, Italy. Wolff, P.H. (1987). The development of behavioural states and the expression q/emotions in early in/ancy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wylie, R.C. (1961). The self concept. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 5 January

1989;

Revised

8 November

1989

H