Children's emotions as organizers of their reactions to interadult anger: A functionalist perspective.

Abstract

Children's emotions have been implicated as mediating their responses to interadult anger, but this proposition has not been directly tested. Sixty-four 4-8-year-olds (32 boys and 32 girls) were induced to feel angry, sad, happy, or just okay before their exposure to interadult anger. Data were analyzed by means of (a) analyses of variance testing differences across conditions and (b) correlations between children's emotions during affect induction procedures and their reactions to interadult anger. Findings indicated that negative emotions increased children's distress and negative appraisals and expectations in reaction to interadult anger, whereas positive emotions reduced distress reactions and increased children's positive expectations about future interadult interactions. The results support a functionalist view that emotions can play a causal role in organizing and directing children's reactions to events and are consistent with research and theory highlighting the role of emotionality in children's coping with marital conflict. Although marital conflict has been repeatedly associated with children's adjustment problems (Grych & Fincham, 1990), the processes through which marital conflict affects children, and how children organize their responses, are little understood (Emery, 1982). The paucity of theory and research about process is a significant gap in the field. Both Grych and Fincham (1990) and Davies and Cummings (1994) have proposed that intraindividual factors, including cognitive processes (Cummings, Davies, & Simpson, 1994; Fincham, Grych, & Osborne, 1994; Grych & Fincham, 1993) and emotional states, interact with the characteristics of marital conflict to shape its impact. However, despite the salience of children's negative emotionality in their reactions to marital conflict in the home (e.g., Cummings, Zahn-Waxier, & RadkeYarrow, 1981, 1984) and to experimental analogues of marital conflict (e.g., Cummings, 1987), there have been no direct tests of the role of emotions. Furthermore, one can make a case for the primacy of children's emotional states in their reactions to marital conflict. For example, based on a consideration of field and experimental research, Emery (1989) proposed that children's distress motivates their behavioral and instrumental reactions to marital conflict. A three-component model was hypothesized: (a) Marital conflict is an aversive event that produces distress in children, (b) children react emotionally or instrumental^ to reduce the distress, and (c) actions that reduce the conflict are maintained because of the function they serve for the family and the child. The significance of emotions in organizing and directing responses to interpersonal events is consistent with more general