Children's Affective Responses, Cognitive Appraisals, and Coping Strategies in Response to the Negative Affect of Parents and Peers

JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL CHILD PSYCHOLOGY ARTICLE NO.

67, 39–56 (1997)

CH972396

Children’s Affective Responses, Cognitive Appraisals, and Coping Strategies in Response to the Negative Affect of Parents and Peers Gary Creasey, Kari Ottlinger, Kimberly DeVico, Terri Murray, Amber Harvey, and Matthew Hesson-McInnis Illinois State University Although research has linked difficulties in parent mood functioning to developmental problems in children, little work has examined why such a link occurs. Following current social-cognitive perspectives on children’s cognitive appraisals to negative parent affect, it was hypothesized that children would show more intense affective responses, less confidence, and less active coping strategies in response to parent, as opposed to peer, negative affect. In the current study, young children (N Å 39) were read experimental vignettes portraying peers and parents in either happy, sad, or angry emotional states. Children were then interviewed about their affective responses, cognitive appraisals, and coping strategies to each vignette. Beyond experiencing more negative affective responses to parent, compared to peer negative affect, children felt they could do little to help themselves when faced with paternal distress and frequently indicated they would engage in avoidant coping strategies (e.g., hiding) to make themselves feel better when confronted with parent sadness. This study has implications for more industrious future research, as well as intervention projects that involve assisting children who live in households marked by high levels of negative adult affect. q 1997 Academic Press

How children cope with the negative emotions displayed by adults is important on a number of practical and theoretical fronts. For example, a number of studies have documented relations between parent depression and children’s depressive symptoms, behavior problems at home and school, and difficulties with social competence (see Downey & Coyne, 1990; Phares & Compas, 1992, for reviews). Frequent parent anger has also been linked to

The authors would like to thank the children who participated in the study, as well as Patricia Jarvis for her thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. This project, in part, was funded by a grant from the Illinois State University Small Grant Program awarded to the first author. Portions of this work were presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Washington, DC, 1997. Address correspondence to Gary Creasey, Department of Psychology, Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois 61790-4620. 39 0022-0965/97 $25.00 Copyright q 1997 by Academic Press All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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adjustment difficulties in children, with numerous studies documenting relations between marital discord and disturbances in children’s emotional, behavior, and cognitive functioning (e.g., Emery, 1982; Grych, Seind, & Fincham, 1992; Katz & Gottman, 1993). While disturbances in parent affect are theoretically presumed to affect children’s development by way of poor parenting practices (Fauber & Long, 1991), it has also been strongly suggested that children can be adversely influenced by simply witnessing parental distress (Emery, Fincham, & Cummings, 1992). Indeed, even observing temporal perturbations in adult mood have been shown to have short-term, negative influences on children. For example, Field (1984) documented that infants of nondepressed mothers show considerable distress when their mothers were trained to simulate depressed affect during interactions. Cummings and colleagues (Cummings, 1987; Cummings, Simpson, & Wilson, 1993) have repeatedly shown in their laboratory research that children who witness short bouts of interadult anger often show adverse reactions, particularly when exposed to unresolved adult conflict. In addition, a number of field studies have documented relations between minor parenting distress brought on by ‘‘bad days’’ or ‘‘daily hassles’’ and behavior problems in children (e.g., Creasey & Reese, 1996; Dumas, 1986). Why might the mere presence of parent negative mood have negative influences on developing children, even in cases where disruptions in parent affect are not touching parenting behaviors? While genetic factors may somewhat account for such associations (Cadoret, O’Gorman, Heywood, & Throughton, 1985), major theories of emotional development (e.g., Bowlby, 1973, 1982; Bretherton, 1992) would strongly suggest that young children are vulnerable to negative affect displayed by parents because they are highly vigilant to the emotional states displayed by caregivers and often use such affect displays as a way to cope with ambiguous or stressful situations. Such theory would also assert that if parents, in particular, are emotionally unavailable during stressful situations due to problems with emotion regulation, then children may ultimately develop coping styles that lead to avoidance of support from caregivers or a tendency to direct anger toward attachment figures during times of duress (Kobak & Sceery, 1988; Main, 1996). Alternatively, if attachment figures are consistently available and emotionally responsive to young children, then such children will develop patterns of attachment marked by seeking support and comfort from caregivers (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). Thus, while children come to attend and respond to the affect displays of other significant figures within their social networks (e.g., relatives, peers, teachers), there is theoretically much at stake for attending to the affect of caregivers. While ethological attachment theory (e.g., Bowlby, 1982) would suggest that distress displayed by children while witnessing the negative emotions of adults is due to their tremendous emotional investment in the relationship, social-cognitive theories of affect regulation would stipulate that another rea-

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son that children may suffer negative outcomes from witnessing negative parent/adult mood is that such intense affect displayed by powerful adults overwhelms the coping repertoires of young children (e.g., Cummings & Davies, 1994). Consistent with broader conceptualizations of the coping process (e.g., Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), theorists stipulate that children’s affective responses (e.g., anger or sadness), cognitive appraisals (e.g., degree of confidence in coping repertoires), and coping strategies (e.g., seeking social support) in response to such negative affect all provide clues to why such observation may have deleterious influences on children (Davies & Cummings, 1995; Grych & Fincham, 1990). As previously stated, infants and children often show emotional distress to adult anger and dysphoria (Cummings, 1987; Field, 1984). While such evidence suggests that children do not enjoy witnessing negative parent affect, additional research suggests that children often do not feel very confident that they can enact coping strategies to alleviate their negative affect when witnessing parental distress (e.g., Grych et al., 1992). According to Grych et al. (1992), such low efficacy expectancies might influence children to feel helpless and prevent the selection of effective coping responses. Research has also examined how children attempt to cope with parental distress. Several studies have indicated that preschoolers often are avoidant of certain forms of parental negative mood, such as adult anger, and that such avoidance is tied to actual behavioral adjustment (Creasey, Mitts, & Catanzaro, 1995; Fabes & Eisenberg, 1992). However, it also is quite apparent that children increasingly begin to use more active coping strategies to combat negative affect displayed by significant others. For example, during the early school years, children increasingly use more advanced problem-solving strategies when confronted with adult negative mood, as well as other interpersonal stressors (Compas, Banez, Malcarne, & Worsham, 1991). Also, during the school years and adolescence, children increasingly begin to use emotionfocused coping skills, such as emotion regulational and support seeking, to mediate the impact of psychological distress (Compas, 1987). While there is an agreement in the literature that the observation of negative parent affect may have potentially harmful influences on children’s psychological health and that witnessing such negative affect can influence children’s affective responses, appraisals, and coping behaviors, there remain several unaddressed issues that we hoped to provide more focus on in the current investigation. One issue pertains to the messenger of the negative mood, and whether the negative mood of mothers is more or less salient than fathers. For example, while much of the work examining the effects of parent anger has focused on interadult conflict, little is known regarding whether angry outbursts by mothers or fathers are more distressing to young children. Relatedly, while there has been much research associating maternal negative affect (primarily depression) with children’s adjustment, there is much less work devoted to paternal negative affect and its consequences (cf. Phares & Com-

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pas, 1992). While this discrepancy might suggest that maternal negative affect has more negative consequences on children’s psychological health than paternal contributions, Phares and Compas (1992) suggest that the affective state of both mothers and fathers have important influences. Indeed, Compas, Howell, Phares, Williams, and LeDoux (1989) found that paternal psychological symptoms were more closely tied to adolescent adjustment than maternal symptoms, and suggested that such distress may be salient because paternal distress may occur less frequently, or because fathers may be viewed as more powerful figures in the family system. In addition, since there are aforementioned theoretical assumptions that parental negative affect is more demanding on children than that displayed by other social agents, we also examined the potential impact of peer negative affect on children’s cognitive appraisals (i.e., degree of confidence in coping abilities), and coping strategies. While much has been written about children’s affective and coping responses to negative peer affect and distress (e.g., Bernzweig, Eisenberg, & Fabes, 1993; Fabes & Eisenberg, 1992), there has been little work comparing children’s thinking regarding parent and peer negative affect. Such a comparison is of potential importance since there is some evidence suggesting that young children cope with parent and peer negative affect in different ways. For example, while several investigators have noted that young children often engage in more avoidant coping efforts (e.g., hiding, emotional discharge) than active, problem-focused strategies (e.g., direct intervention) in the face of parental negative affect (e.g., Creasey et al., 1995; Crockenberg, 1985; Karniol & Heinman, 1987), other researchers (e.g., Bernzweig et al., 1993; Fabes & Eisenberg, 1992) have found that preschoolers are more likely to favor direct, active coping efforts in response to peer negative affect (as opposed to avoidant strategies). Thus, it would be predicted that when confronted with parent and peer negative affect, children would choose more active coping strategies to combat peer negative affect, and more avoidant strategies to cope with parent negative affect. Since both children (Altschuler & Ruble, 1989; Band & Weisz, 1988) and adults (e.g., Roth & Cohen, 1986) prefer to enact avoidant coping strategies in situations that are perceived to be less controllable, it was also predicted that children would perceive parent negative affect to be less controllable than peer negative affect. In addition, since coping efficacy is theorized to predict the use of active coping strategies (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), it was predicted that children who indicated a high degree of confidence that they could make themselves feel better in the face of negative affect would select more active coping strategies than children who reported lower confidence. We also proposed several research questions that were more exploratory in nature. First, while researchers have often studied the impact of parental sadness or depression somewhat in isolation of parental anger, we were interested in studying how children respond to both forms of negative affect. In addition, we examined how negative affect may influence children’s cogni-

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tions and coping strategies as a function of gender. While several studies indicate that both boys and girls are negatively affected by parental negative affect, such as interparent discord (e.g., Emery, 1982), and often are quite similar in self-generated coping strategies in response to another person’s distress (Bernweig et al., 1993), there is also some suggestion that girls show more intense emotional responses to the negative affect of others (e.g., Fabes, Eisenberg, McCormick, & Wilson, 1988). Thus, the available research regarding this particular research question is contradictory at best. METHOD

Sample Thirty-nine (15 boys; 24 girls) nonspecial education first- and second-grade children (M age Å 6.6; SD Å .63) attending a public elementary school serving a middle-class community participated in the study. The sample was primarily Caucasian (n Å 31) and most of the children resided in intact families (n Å 33). This age range for research participants was selected because of the suggestion that younger, school-aged children are more vulnerable to the negative affect of others because their coping repertoires are more limited than those of older, school-aged children and adolescents (Cummings & Davies, 1994). Preschoolers were not included because research has suggested that children’s coping with negative affect may undergo developmental changes during the transition from preschool to grade school (Creasey, Lustig, Catanzaro, Reese, & Herman, 1995). Parents of all potential research participants were mailed a letter explaining the purposes and procedures of the study. Approximately 70% of the parents returned a signed consent form in a postage paid return envelope, with approximately 80% of these parents providing positive consent. Procedures and Instrumentation Children were read nine two- to three-sentence vignettes, presented in a random order for each child, that portrayed a character displaying either happy, sad, or angry affect. Each vignette contained approximately the same number of words as well as word characters, and portrayed a peer, mother, or father displaying one of the aforementioned emotions. The rationale for why the characters were displaying a given emotion (e.g., sadness) was kept as constant as possible across characters. For example, in the vignettes portraying character anger, all of the characters were portrayed as experiencing this emotion due to having a goal blocked (e.g., not being able to draw a picture or get a lawn mower started). In addition, in each vignette, the child (i.e., research participant) was portrayed as a passive, casual observer, as opposed to having any active role in the character’s affective state. After each vignette, children completed the following measures in the following order:

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Initial Emotional Reactions Children were asked to indicate how they would feel about the person portrayed in each vignette. Children were presented sketched faces displaying happy, sad, or angry emotional expressions. For each emotion, children were asked to mark 5-point Likert-type scales anchored on either side by the words ‘‘Not at all’’ or ‘‘A whole lot.’’ Rating scales contrived in this manner often show considerable correspondence to the types of emotions children actually express in response to stressful events in the natural environment (Elliott, Jay, & Woody, 1987). Although it is recognized that the rating scales did not cover the full range of possible negative emotions (e.g., ashamed, worried), we were compelled to limit the number of rating scales because of concerns of participant fatigue, as well as the possibility that these young children would have greater difficulties decoding facial expressions attempting to portray these other emotions. In addition, there is research that suggests that anger or sadness (or both) are more typical responses to the interpersonal context of emotions, such as anger, than other emotions (e.g. shame or fear) (Whitesell & Harter, 1996). Cognitive Appraisals/Coping Efficacy As an index of coping efficacy, children were next asked whether they could make themselves feel better, as well as the character portrayed in the vignette (1 Å Not at all; 3 Å Very much so). Coping efficacy was only assessed for the six vignettes portraying angry or sad character affect. Coping Strategies Children next indicated all of the things they might do to make themselves feel better for the vignettes portraying character anger or sadness. In addition, children were asked to select a coping strategy they would actually use if confronted with the situation. Children’s coping strategies were coded using the following categories (Causey & Dubow, 1992): (a) seeking social support, (b) self-reliance/problem solving, (c) distancing, (d) internalizing reaction (e.g., crying), and (e) externalizing reaction (e.g., throwing something). This open-ended format to assess coping responses was selected for a number of reasons. First, given the young age of these children, we had concerns that children’s attention spans would begin to wander if subjects were presented lists of coping options following each vignette. Second, there are no coping inventories we are aware of that have been developed for children of this age range. Finally, presenting children with lists of coping options opens up the possibility that they will simply endorse responses that are perceived as most socially desirable. While actually observing children respond differentially to parent and peer negative affect in a naturalistic situation would be the most valid assessment of a child’s coping repertoire, research has shown that methodologies that use

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children’s self-generated coping strategies from hypothetical vignettes have satisfactory psychometric properties. For example, Creasey et al. (1995) found that kindergartner’s self-generated coping responses to parent bickering or teacher anger were related to actual behavioral functioning as reported by parents and teachers, and that children’s coping responses were stable over a 2-week period. Bernzweig et al. (1993) found that children’s self-generated coping strategies were moderately correlated to maternal reports of the coping strategies that their children actually used when confronted with interpersonal stress. In the current study, raters were provided definitions of each coping category as suggested by Causey and Dubow (1992). Interrater agreement was nearly 100% for all categories, and overall percentage agreement was 95%. For all analyses, children’s coping strategies were further coded into two broad categories using Roth and Cohen’s (1986) approach–avoidance distinction. Seeking social support and problem solving responses were coded as active coping, or strategies characterized as methods to combat directly and effectively a potentially stressful encounter (e.g., Carver, Schier, & Weintraub, 1989; Catanzaro, Horaney, & Creasey, 1995). In contrast, distancing, internalizing, externalizing reactions were coded as avoidant coping, or undirected strategies unlikely to alleviate a stressful encounter. A number of studies have indicated that the strategies conceptualized to be either active or avoidant tend to cluster or correlate with one another in meaningful ways (i.e., active strategies are often positively correlated with one another, yet negatively correlated with the strategies we designated as avoidant) (e.g., Carver et al., 1989). RESULTS

Children’s Affective Responses to Character Affect In terms of predicting children’s affective responses to the nine vignettes, a 3 (Character Affect) 1 3 (Character) 1 3 (Child Affective Responses) 1 2 (Gender) mixed MANOVA was conducted in which the first three factors were treated as within-subject variables (for each multivariate analysis, Wilks’ lambda criterion was used to test the multivariate null hypothesis). This procedure revealed significant main effects for character affect, F(2,36) Å 10.10, p õ .0003, and child affective responses, F(2,36) Å 31.07, p õ .0001. In addition, significant character affect 1 child affective responses, F(4,34) Å 114.47, p õ .0001, and character affect 1 character 1 child affective responses, F(8,30) Å 2.98, p õ .01, interactions were also noted. Figure 1 illustrates mean child character response scores plotted by character and character affect. To deconstruct the significant three-way interaction, single degree of freedom planned comparisons were conducted. These contrasts revealed that when one considers children’s affective responses (i.e., happy, sad, or angry) to character affect (i.e., happy, sad, or angry), the interaction between these two factors is not the same for peer affect when

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FIG. 1.

Children’s emotional reactions to character affect.

contrasted to parent affect, t(30) Å 02.32, p õ .03. The presentation of the means in Fig. 1 suggests that this significant contrast effect reflects children’s happy affective responses to happy affect are similar across characters, while children’s sad and angry responses to negative affect are not the same for parents and peers and that negative affective responses are generally stronger for parent negative affect—this finding seems particularly true regarding sad responses to the negative affect of parents and peers. In addition, when one also considers negative affective responses to sad and mad parent affect, analyses revealed that this interaction effect is not the same for mothers and fathers, t(30) Å 03.96, p õ .004—the distance between congruent and incongruent affective responses to negative mother and father affect is not the same. As illustrated in the figure, this significant contrast effect suggests that while children indicated that they would be quite sad in response to mother and father sadness, children also reported elevated mad reactions to maternal sadness as well. Children’s Coping Efficacy In terms of predicting children’s coping confidence to the six vignettes depicting character anger or sadness, a 2 (Character Affect) 1 3 (Character) 1 2 (Coping Efficacy) 1 2 (Gender) mixed MANOVA was conducted in which the first three factors were treated as within-subject variables. This analysis revealed a significant main effect for character, F(2,36) Å 4.50, p õ .02, and a significant character reaction 1 character 1 coping efficacy, F(2,36) Å 3.32, p õ .05, interaction.

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FIG. 2.

Children’s efficacy appraisals to character negative affect.

Children’s coping efficacy scores are plotted in Fig. 2 by character and character affect. As the presentation of the means in the figure illustrates, children’s perceptions of how much they can do to make themselves, as well as peers and mothers, feel better are quite similar. In contrast, when one also considers coping efficacy to the sad and mad affect of mothers and fathers, an examination of the planned comparisons revealed that this interaction effect is not the same for mothers and fathers, t(30) Å 02.53, p õ .02. In particular, children indicated they could do less to make sad fathers feel better than sad mothers. Children’s Self-Generated Coping Strategies Children generated a total of 404 coping responses to the six vignettes depicting character negative affect, suggesting 221 active and 183 avoidant coping responses. A vast majority of the active coping responses (95%) focused on direct problem solving (e.g., helping parent fix a broken appliance) or attempts to assist directly the character in regulating negative emotions (e.g., giving character something to make them feel better). In regard to avoidant strategies, most of the coping strategies (70%) focused on one form of distancing—engaging in some form of alternative activity, such as going outside to play or watching television. In terms of predicting children’s coping strategies to the six vignettes depicting character anger or sadness, a 2 (Character Affect) 1 3 (Character) 1 2 (Coping Strategies) 1 2 (Gender) mixed MANOVA was conducted in

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FIG. 3.

Children’s self-generated coping strategies in response to character negative affect.

which the first three factors were treated as within-subject variables. This analysis revealed a significant character 1 gender, F(2,36) Å 3.56, p õ .04 interaction. Children generated similar numbers of coping strategies to parent and peer anger; however, in response to father, in contrast to mother sadness, girls generated more coping strategies than boys, t(30) Å 2.57, p õ .02. In addition, a character 1 character affect 1 coping strategies, F(2,36) Å 3.57, p õ .04, interaction was observed. Planned contrasts of the three-way interaction indicated that when one considers children’s coping responses (i.e., active and avoidant) to character sad or mad affect, the interaction between these two factors is not the same for peer affect when contrasted to parent affect, t(30) Å 2.68, p õ .01. As Fig. 3 illustrates, children generated more active coping strategies to peer sadness and more avoidant strategies in response to parent sadness. This trend was not true for character anger. Children’s Coping Preferences to Character Negative Affect Beyond simply generating coping strategies to each vignette, children were also asked to indicate which coping strategies they would actually use if confronted with the situation. As can be seen by Table 1, children were more likely to prefer active coping strategies in response to peer, as opposed to parental sadness, X2(2) Å 5.77, p õ .05. This coping preference pattern was not replicated for character anger—children were not different in the choice of coping strategies as a function of character, X2(2) Å .276, p Å .87.

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NEGATIVE AFFECT AND CHILDREN TABLE 1 Coping Preference Percentages to Character Negative Affect Negative affect Sadness Peer Mother Father Anger Peer Mother Father

Active

Avoidant

61.5 (24) 41.0 (16) 35.9 (14)

38.5 (15) 59.0 (23) 64.1 (25)

56.4 (22) 56.4 (22) 51.3 (20)

43.6 (17) 43.6 (17) 48.7 (19)

Note. Numbers within parentheses denote n’s.

Relations between Coping Efficacy and Self-Generated Coping Strategies To test the prediction that confidence in coping abilities would be related to self-generated coping strategies, confidence appraisals were correlated with coping strategies. As Table 2 indicates, in general, children who indicated a high degree of confidence regarding their abilities to make themselves feel better also suggested more active coping strategies to reduce their own nega-

TABLE 2 Correlations between Coping Efficacy and Self-Generated Coping Strategies Coping efficacy–Self Sadness Peer Active Avoidant Preference Mother Active Avoidant Preference Father Active Avoidant Preference

Anger

Coping efficacy–Character Sadness

Anger

.34* .04 0.35*

.37* .02 0.32*

.27 .09 0.16

.10 .03 0.01

.38* 0.10 0.49**

.38* .02 0.58***

0.01 .08 0.01

.24 .01 0.15

.41** .13 0.35*

.27 .05 0.31*

.25 .05 0.28

.34* 0.02 0.37*

Note. N’s are 39. For coping efficacy, higher scores denote higher confidence. For coping preference, active preference was coded as 1, avoidant preference was coded as 2. * p õ .05. ** p õ .01. *** p õ .001.

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tive affect. Interestingly, children who strongly felt they could make themselves feel better in the fact of paternal negative affect were also likely to generate active coping strategies to reduce the negative affect of fathers. While coping efficacy was not related to the number of avoidant strategies children generated, confidence in coping abilities was related to children’s preferred coping strategies. For all vignettes, children who indicated a low degree of confidence in their coping abilities were more likely to prefer avoidant coping strategies to make themselves feel better in response to character negative affect. DISCUSSION

While research has documented that children frequently show distress when confronted with both temporal (e.g., Cummings, 1987; Field, 1984) and chronic negative parent affect (e.g., Downey & Coyne, 1990; Davies & Cummings, 1995), the current study shed light on why young, school-aged children may be at risk. In general, children appraised negative parent and peer affect in different ways. For example, our sample felt more sad when confronted with the negative affect (both anger and sadness) of parents, as opposed to peers. There are several possible reasons for this finding. As stated earlier, it is quite possible that young, school-aged children have more investment in the affective functioning of parents than peers. Parent–child relationships are primarily founded on emotional attachments (e.g., Bowlby, 1982) and developing children often heavily rely on the emotional expressions of parents to apply meaning not only to the parent’s state of mind but to their broader social worlds (Bornstein & Lamb, 1992). In contrast, children of this age range often value their peer relationships on the basis of shared play activities rather than emotional attachment (Hartup, 1983). Thus, the emotional availability of parents may be much more salient to children than the affective functioning of a peer. Second, because parents may be viewed as more powerful than peers (e.g., Creasey et al., 1995), it is quite conceivable that children felt they could do less to alleviate the negative affect of these older adults. This point was partially supported by our finding that children felt less confident when confronted with paternal distress. On the other hand, children indicated similar degrees of confidence when confronted with maternal and peer negative affect; hence, one cannot draw the conclusion that differences in confidence appraisals solely account for such differential responding. Finally, since there are apparent developmental differences between the emotional regulatory abilities of young peers and adults, it is quite possible that children encounter sad or angry outbursts by peers more frequently than parents. Thus, when a parent displays intense negative affect, it may be more unexpected and therefore more emotionally distressing. While parent and peer distress influenced differential affective responses in children, there was also some suggestion that maternal and paternal distress

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differentially influences these affective responses. For example, we found that children were more likely to report more angry negative affect when confronted with maternal distress. It would seem that if the reasons why children display negative affective responses to parent distress were similar, then children would also display similar responses in affect intensity, (in)congruency of affective responses, and similar efficacy expectancies. Undoubtedly, a future research direction would be to ask children why they endorsed the measures of affect intensity in the manner they did, as well as possibly poll children on a wider variety of affective responses (e.g., fear) to better explain children’s differential affective responses to parent and peer distress. It was expected that children would suggest and prefer more active coping strategies to the negative affect of peers, as opposed to parents. This hypothesis was supported in terms of children’s responses to parent and peer sadness. Children suggested more active coping strategies (mostly forms of direct assistance) in response to peer sadness and suggested more avoidant strategies (mostly in the form of behavioral distraction, such as going outside to play) in response to paternal sadness. In addition, children preferred active coping responses in response to peer sadness and preferred avoidant strategies in response to parent sadness. This finding further supports the scattered empirical research on children’s coping with interpersonal distress, which has documented that young children are more active in their efforts to alleviate peer distress (Fabes & Eisenberg, 1992) but are often avoidant of adult-generated negative affect (Creasey et al., 1995). Marshaling together the results of the current study with other available research (e.g., Creasey et al., 1995; Fabes & Eisenberg, 1992), it is possible that one important function of the peer group during early childhood is that it may provide an important context for the development of emotion regulation skills in young children. Because the emotional significance or power differential of child–parent dyads may be more overwhelming for children than child–peer dyads, the peer context may provide a safe context in which children can begin to approach comfortably the distress of others. The distancing from certain forms of parent distress, at least during the early school years, may be adaptive since children may not have developed active coping strategies to cope effectively with parent distress (Creasey et al., 1995), or because of concerns that active involvement in such distress might result in a parent’s targeting of negative affect toward the child. The consistent finding that confidence in coping skills was positively related to the generation, and preference, of active coping strategies is interesting for a number of reasons. First, while much work has documented relations between such appraisals and coping skills in adolescent (Compas et al., 1991) and adult (Folkman, Lazarus, Dunkel-Schetter, DeLongis, & Gruen, 1986) populations, little work has examined these relations in such a young sample. Based on our initial findings, we tentatively suggest that young, school-aged children with parents exhibiting severe affective distress might be assisted

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by cognitive-based treatments designed to alter appraisal systems (cf. Grych et al., 1992). Indeed, it may be particularly critical to change how children think about their situation (i.e., perceived control) before teaching them how actually to cope with their parent’s distress. The finding that parent anger was not consistently related to affective responses, confidence appraisals, and coping choices was somewhat surprising, and not consistent with the available literature. For example, Creasey et al. (1995) found that in response to parent and teacher anger, children frequently generated, and preferred, avoidant coping strategies. Perhaps one reason that parent anger did not spark similar reactions in this sample was because the anger portrayed in the vignettes was not child-directed (e.g., Creasey et al., 1995) or interadult (Creasey et al., 1995; Cummings, Vogel, Cummings, & El-Sheikh, 1989) in nature. Thus, a parent who is angry because a lawn mower will not start may be perceived very differently than a parent who is angry with a child, or bickering with a spouse. Curiously, although parent sadness was also portrayed in such a way not to involve directly the child or another adult, children frequently indicated that they would prefer to distance themselves from this form of affect. Why might children generate more active coping responses to parent anger and more avoidant responses to parent sadness? Although there are no data on this issue, perhaps children routinely witness a greater ratio of angry to sad affective bouts because they occur more frequently, or perceived more frequently by children because of the externalizing nature of anger (e.g., swearing, yelling). In addition, the reason a parent is upset may be more readily available to a child in cases of anger (e.g., hitting a thumb with a hammer; yelling at a slow driver in another car) than sadness. Similar to other studies examining children’s coping reasoning in response to others’ distress (e.g., Bernzweig et al., 1993), we found no significant differences on most of the study variables in relation to child gender. While there is the possibility that boys and girls do not differ in how they respond to the negative emotions of significant others, there is the distinct possibility that gender predicts emotional reactions and coping behaviors in more specific situations involving distinct significant others. For example, Fabes and Eisenberg (1992) found that in cases when peer anger is directed toward children, boys were more likely to vent their anger, while girls were more likely to resort to active resistance. Thus, in situations where negative affect is directed toward the child, it is possible that gender differences are more likely to arise than in situations where the child is a passive observer of a negative affect state. In a similar fashion, the research program of Cummings and colleagues (e.g., Cummings & Davies, 1994) has revealed gender differences in children’s coping with interadult conflict (e.g., boys more angry, girls more anxious). Perhaps whether negative affect is perceived as interpersonal provides some basis for the expression of differential affective expressions and coping responses of girls and boys. Alternatively, it may also be possible that

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the small number of subjects in this particular study masked any potential gender differences. While the current study yielded promising initial data regarding how children interpret the negative affect of significant others, this research needs to be replicated and extended to other populations. The children were of one age group and the sample was relatively homogenous in nature. In addition, one important research direction would be to examine how children with different developmental histories respond to the experimental vignettes. For example, it is quite likely that children who have a caregiver with a major affective disturbance would respond very differently than a counterpart without such a history. It is also acknowledged that the affective responses and coping strategies children voice to experimental vignettes may not reflect exactly how children respond to actual parent or peer negative affect since this particular analog method is not as stimulating as real behavior. On the other hand, the value of analog procedures rests with the fact that researchers can experimentally control difficult to assess variables such that variation in children’s cognitive appraisals can be systematically assessed in conjunction with changes in affective contexts. Such assessment is vital for the testing of central theories of the stress and coping process (cf. Grych & Fincham, 1993). Nevertheless, more research involving the systematic observation of children’s responses to parent and peer negative affect would be a substantial contribution to the field. In summary, our research suggests that young, school-aged children react more negatively to parent negative affect, and they prefer to avoid certain elements (e.g., sadness) of parent emotional distress. Should parents refrain from displaying negative affect, particularly sadness, in order to shield or protect their children? While it is tempting to suggest that parents focus more on regulating their negative emotions in front of young children, particularly in light of research associating severe disruptions in parent affect with emotional and behavioral problems in children (e.g., Downey & Coyne, 1990), it is quite possible that not all forms of parent negative affect equally influences all children across all contexts. For example, the child’s developmental status, past experiences with coping with parent negative affect, and temperament all may play some role in moderating the influence of exposure to negative affect (cf. Cummings & Davies, 1994). In addition, how negative affect is communicated to the child may also play a role in how negatively or benignly the child interprets the affective disruption (Grych & Fincham, 1993). There may also be a point where adult negative emotions play an important role for the development of children’s coping skills and emotion regulation abilities (Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow, Wagner, & Chapman, 1992). Undoubtedly, witnessing parents constructively cope with their negative affect may serve as an important social reference for the developing child. In addition, a better understanding of the reasons behind the negative affect of both parent and peers because of advances in cognitive maturity (e.g., Strayer,

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1986) may place the child in a salient context to turn the negative affect of others into a significant learning experience. APPENDIX Sample Experimental Vignettes

Happy

Sad

Mad

It’s your moms birthday. That afternoon, she gets a big surprise package. In the package is her favorite type of shoes. She begins to smile and laugh. There was a contest in your friend’s school class. Your friend entered a painting into the contest and did not win. Your friend begins to cry. Your father is getting ready to go for a drive in the car but the car will not start. Your father tries to fix it but can not. Your father throws the keys on the ground and begins to yell.

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