Mixed Message Resolution and Children's Responses to Interadult Conflict

Abstract

In everyday life marital conflict resolutions may contain consistent or mixed messages (e.g., an angry apology). How do children weight content and emotion information in responding? 5-7- and 9-12-year-olds viewed videotaped interadult conflicts in which the content and emotion of endings were either consistent or discrepant. Both the younger and older children responded to content and emotion cues in their perceptions of adults' anger and conflict resolution, with positive emotion and nonconflictual endings each improving appraisals. These findings have implications for children's emotional security in reaction to marital conflict. Younger children focused on (a) the content of endings when estimating their own emotional distress and (b) adults' emotionality when suggesting interventions. Older children reacted emotionally to both content and emotion cues. They proposed task-oriented help for partially resolved conflicts and suggested mediation when conflicts were unresolved.