Emotional Competence and the Development of Self

Abstract

Functionalist thinking in emotions theory has focused new attention on the growth of emotional competence and its relational origins (Saarni, Mumme, & Campos, 1998). As defined by Saarni (1990, 1999), emotional competence is the capacity for self-efficacy in emotion-eliciting social transactions. Its constituents include an awareness of one's emotions and those of others, a capacity to use emotion vocabulary and expressions, empathy, the differentiation of internal subjectivity from outward expression, emotion regulation and coping skills, and adaptive emotional communication within relationships. This portrayal of emotional competence is somewhat broader than (but consistent with) the one adopted by Eisenberg, Cumberland, and Spinrad in their target article, and illustrates how intimately interconnected are processes of emotional growth with allied developments in social competence, self-understanding, relational security, social cognition, and moral understanding. This is perhaps inevitable because emotion itself is an integrative developmental process, making it difficult to chart the growth of emotional competence without appreciating its connections to many other features of sociopersonality, intellectual, and motivational development. In this light, what are parental emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs)? The authors' insightful analysis emphasizes parental reactions to children's emotional expressions, discourse concerning emotion, and the adult's emotional expressiveness. They acknowledge, however, that this does not exhaust the scope of socialization practices relevant to emotional competence in offspring. Indeed, given the breadth of influences on the growth of emotional competence, it is arguable that many parental practices socialize emotion in children even when they are not specifically emotion focused or occur in the context of emotional expressions. This is especially true early in life, when, for example, (a) the security of attachment shapes initial schemas (or working models, according to attachment theorists) of relationships that influence emotional experience and its expression, (b) parental efforts at behavioral management (beginning late in infancy) introduce new contingencies between parent and child, and (c) parental socialization of instrumental competence shapes emergent self-representations and the emotional consequences of self-confidence or self-doubt (Kochanska & Thompson, 1997; Laible & Thompson, 1998; Stipek, 1995; Thompson, 1998). When a parent persistently redirects a determined toddler away from the VCR, encourages a preschooler's artistic efforts or applauds a drawing, or uses inductions to underscore another' s hurt feelings owing to a child's teasing, emotional competence is being socialized. The breadth of potentially influential emotion-related socialization practices means that studying the growth of emotional competence requires examining allied influences on the development of conscience, self-understanding, and relational security. Consider, for example, the following conversation between a 21-month-old and his mother about an event earlier in the morning: