Family Expressiveness and Emotion Understanding: A Meta-Analysis of One Aspect of Parental Emotion Socialization

Abstract

Associations between family styles of expressing emotion and children's skill in understanding emotion were examined using a meta-analytic strategy for synthesizing the studies in this area. Moderating variables of emotion valence, age group, and measurement independence in the relationship between family expressiveness and outcomes in children were measured, as well as differences in the operationalization of expressiveness, understanding, who is the 'family', and other research design elements. Parents' overall expressiveness and negative-submissive expressiveness exhibited a significant negative relationship with children's emotion understanding over age. Negative family expressiveness and children's emotion understanding tended to be curvilinearly related across age (an inverted U-shaped relationship). Explanations for these relations and future goals for research are discussed.