Parents, Television, and Children’s Emotional Expressions: A Cross-Cultural Multilevel Model

Abstract

Parents and media both play an important role in the socialization of children’s emotions, yet it remains unclear whether these socializing influences vary by culture. We studied the joint influences of parents and television on children’s expression of four basic emotions (happiness, anger, sadness, and fear) using self-report survey data from 3570 six- to 15-year-olds from 13 Asian, European, Middle Eastern, and South American countries. Perceived parental approval positively predicted self-reported expression of all four emotions. In addition, children’s approval of TV characters’ expression of happiness and anger (but not sadness and fear) positively predicted self-reported expressions of these emotions. A multilevel model combining cultural indicators (individualism, indulgence, assertiveness, humane orientation) and sociopolitical variables (Human Development Index, Gender Inequality Index, Grade Point Average) at the country level with individual-level variables (age, gender, media use) suggested that parental socialization of sadness, and media socialization of anger, varied as a function of some cultural indicators (assertiveness and humane orientation). Overall, though, despite theorizing about cultural differences, parental approval and (to a lesser extent) children’s approval of media models tended to predict children’s emotion displays rather consistently across a wide array of countries.