The Relationship between Chinese Parents' Reaction to Children's Negative Emotions and Children's Understanding of Emotions

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate Chinese parents’ reaction to their children’s negative emotions and how these reactions relate to their children’s understanding of emotions. Forty-two Chinese children (aged 4) and their parents participated in this study. Coping with Children’s Negative Emotion Scale was given to parents to assess their reaction to their children’s negative emotions. Children’s emotional understanding was assessed using the modified emotional false‐belief task and mixed emotion task. The results showed that Chinese parents gave supportive reactions more than non‐supportive reactions to their children, and no difference in sex was found. The percentages of correct answers to false‐belief task and mixed emotion task were low with no gender difference in both tasks. When age and sex of children were controlled, only fathers’ supportive reactions to children’s negative emotions significantly explained the variances in the level of children's understanding of emotions in both tasks. That is, children whose fathers showed greater supportive reactions to their negative emotions performed better at both tasks. It was concluded that fathers’ supportive reactions to their children’s negative emotions are very influential for emotional understanding among 4-year-old children in China.