International Journal of Behavioral Development

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Mothers' expressive style and emotional responses to children's behavior predict children's prosocial
and achievement-related self-ratings
Julie C. Dunsmore, Isabel S. Bradburn, Philip R. Costanzo and Barbara L. Fredrickson
International Journal of Behavioral Development 2009 33: 253 originally published online 25 February 2009
DOI: 10.1177/0165025408098025

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International Journal of Behavioral Development © 2009 The International Society for the
2009, 33 (3), 253–264 Study of Behavioural Development
http://www.sagepublications.com DOI: 10.1177/0165025408098025

Mothers’ expressive style and emotional responses

to children’s behavior predict children’s prosocial and
achievement-related self-ratings

Julie C. Dunsmorea, Isabel S. Bradburna, Philip R. Costanzob, and Barbara L. Fredricksonc

In this study we investigated whether mothers’ typical expressive style and specific emotional
responses to children’s behaviors are linked to children’s prosocial and competence self-ratings. Eight-
to 12-year-old children and their mothers rated how mothers had felt when children behaved pro-
socially and antisocially, achieved and failed to achieve. Children rated self-descriptiveness of proso-
cial and achievement-related traits. Mothers’ positive expressiveness was associated with children’s
higher achievement-related self-ratings. Mothers’ positive- and negative-dominant expressiveness was
associated with children’s lower prosocial self-ratings. Mothers’ happiness about both children’s
prosocial and achievement-related behavior was associated with children’s higher self-ratings for both
domains. Mothers’ anger about children’s antisocial behavior was related to children’s lower self-
ratings for both domains. When mothers were higher in negative-submissive expressiveness, and
responded with more sadness to children’s failure to achieve, children reported lower achievement
self-ratings. Results support the importance of multidimensional assessment of self-concept and
suggest that parents’ typical expressive style moderates the influence of parents’ specific emotional
responses on children’s self-ratings.

Keywords: emotion; family expressiveness; middle childhood; mother–child interaction; self

Sense of self is associated with a host of important cognitive
and socio-emotional processes, including memory and infor-
mation processing (Markus, 1977; Markus, Crane, Bernstein,
& Siladi, 1982; Sui & Zhu, 2005; Wang, 2004), and social
judgments, status, and behavior (Caldwell, Rudolph, Troop-
Gordon, & Kim, 2004; Catrambone & Markus, 1987; Cornell
et al., 1990; Egan & Perry, 1998; Fong & Markus, 1982;
Froming, Nasby, & McManus, 1998; Markus, Smith &
Moreland, 1985). Cognitive-affective representations of the
self appear to be multidimensional (Harter, 1999; Marsh,
Craven, & Debus, 1998) and influenced by both social
comparison and social feedback (Cooley, 1902; Harter, 1999;
Mead, 1934).
An important source of social feedback is children’s parents.
Theorists have long proposed that parents’ emotion-laden
communication is central to children’s understanding of their
own behavior and developing sense of self and identity (Dix,
1991; Higgins, 1989, 1991; Stern, 1985; Sullivan 1940, 1953;
see also Dunsmore & Halberstadt, 1997). Empirical research
likewise suggests an important role for parental emotional
communication in children’s self-concepts. In the following
a Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA. b Duke University,
USA. c University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University, USA.
sections we review literature related to three models of how
parents’ emotional communication may influence children’s
self-concepts: (a) general approval, (b) selective parental
socialization, and (c) salience.
General approval model
Throughout childhood and adolescence, parental acceptance
or approval is strongly linked to children’s positive self-esteem
(Harter, 1999), as is how much positive affect a parent typi-
cally expresses at home (Halberstadt, Crisp, & Eaton, 1999;
Halberstadt & Eaton, 2003). How well children think they are
living up to their parents’ standards also predicts child self-
esteem (Harter, 1990; Higgins, 1991; Moretti & Higgins,
1990). Parents’ emotional reactions to their child’s behavior
inform the child about parental standards for behavior and
how capable parents think the child is of meeting those stan-
dards (Barrett & Nelson-Goens, 1997; Higgins, 1991). Indeed,
both positive and negative parental emotional reactions to
children’s behavior are related to children’s experience of self-
reflective emotions, such as pride, shame, and guilt (Alessandri
& Lewis, 1993; Barrett & Nelson-Goens, 1997; Harter, 1996,
1999; Sroufe, 1996).

Correspondence should be sent to Dr Julie Dunsmore, Mail Code
0436, Blacksburg, VA 24060, USA; e-mail: jdunsmor@vt.edu
The first author conducted this study in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the doctoral degree from Duke University. A Grant-
in-Aid for Research from Sigma Xi funded this study. Portions of this
manuscript were presented at the Society for Research in Child
Development, March 1995, Indianapolis, IN and at the Society for
Research in Child Development, April 2001, Minneapolis, MN. We
thank Amy G. Halberstadt and Danny Axsom for comments on an
earlier version of this manuscript. We thank Amanda Bahho, Naureen
Bhullar, Janet Davis, Pam Dixon, Anna Guerin, Maggie Hanson,
Christy Jackson, Rachel Liccardo, Holland Omar, Sasha Paroff,
Milagros Ramirez, Megan Robinson, Seema Shah, Eric Teruel, and
Colleen Trzaskos for their assistance with this project. We are grateful
to the mothers and children who participated.

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254 DUNSMORE ET AL. / MOTHER’S EXPRESSIVE STYLE AND EMOTIONAL RESPONSES TO CHILDREN’S BEHAVIOR
The intensity and type of parental affective response may
alter how children interpret and internalize their parents’
responses and so are important to study (Halberstadt et al.,
1999). Although not focusing on self-concept formation,
studies of children’s social competence and achievement
indicate that moderate to high positive parental expressivity and
mild to moderate negative expressiveness may be most
beneficial to children’s behavior. For example, mild maternal
anger is associated with preschoolers’ greater social competence
(Denham & Grout, 1992), and elementary school age children’s
sympathy is greater when parents report moderate negative-
dominant expressivity (e.g., anger, contempt) compared to both
low and high levels of parental negative-dominant expressivity
(Valiente, Eisenberg et al., 2004).
Several studies show linear relationships between parental
positive expressivity and children’s social competence (Halber-
stadt et al., 1999). Parental positive expressivity was linked to
a teacher rating of boys’ functioning in late elementary and
early middle school, including both academic and socio-
emotional functioning (Bronstein, Fitzgerald, Briones,
Pieniadz, & D’Ari, 1993), and a composite of parental positive
and negative expressivity was unrelated to children’s reading
achievement but positively associated with a teacher rating of
children’s concentration, attentional focus, and ability to
complete schoolwork and with math achievement in early
elementary school (Greenberg, Lengua, Coie, Pinderhughes,
& the Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 1999).
However, Valiente et al. (2004) found that elementary school
age children’s sympathy is greater when parents report
moderate positive expressivity compared to both low and high
levels of parental positive expressivity. They suggest that high
levels of both positive and negative expressive intensity may
lead to children’s over-arousal.
The type of parental emotional response also appears signifi-
cant. Hostility and contempt – two forms of negative-dominant
emotions – appear particularly corrosive to personal and family
functioning (Gottman, 1994; Hooley, 2004), including self-
esteem (Capaldi, Forgatch, & Crosby, 1994). A high negative-
dominant parental affective style is associated with elementary
school children’s self-protective use of emotion display rules
(Jones, Abbey, & Cumberland, 1998). Parental expression of
negative-submissive emotions, such as sadness, disappoint-
ment or guilt, is associated with both positive and negative
outcomes. Mothers’ negative-submissive expressivity is associ-
ated with less self-soothing among toddlers (Garner, 1995)
and less prosocial use of emotion display rules in elementary
school age children (Jones et al., 1998). However, when
mothers are moderate to high in negative-submissive expres-
siveness, their elementary school age children’s constructive
coping is less negatively affected by daily stress (Valiente,
Fabes, Eisenberg, & Spinrad, 2004).
In summary, parental emotional expressiveness with
children has been linked to global indices of self-worth and
with children’s behaviors that are increasingly related to
children’s self-concepts by middle childhood. However, we
know little about how parental expressive style at home is
linked to children’s domain-specific self-concepts. Given that
parental expressive style predicts children’s self-esteem and
social and academic competence, it may be that positive and
negative parental expressiveness have linear and curvilinear
effects on children’s general self-concept across domains, anal-
ogous to a sense of self-worth or “character” (Turiel, 2006).
The first goal of this study is to test this general approval model.
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Selective parental socialization model
Parents actively try to shape their children’s behavior and atti-
tudes (Bugental & Grusec, 2006; Maccoby & Martin, 1983;
Parke & Buriel, 2006), but little is known about how parents’
specific emotional communications may relate to different
domains of children’s self-concepts. By mid- to late childhood,
children have well-differentiated self-concepts that incorporate
multiple schemas pertaining to different aspects of their lives
(Damon & Hart, 1988; Harter, 1999; Higgins, 1989, 1991;
Marsh & Craven, 2006; Moretti & Higgins, 1990, 1999; Ruble
& Dweck, 1995). Two aspects are particularly significant for
parents: behavioral conduct and achievement (Harter, 1999).
Given the centrality of these domains for parents, it seems
plausible that their reactions to children’s performance in these
areas may be particularly salient for children, but the process
is not clear. For example, consider the parent who expresses
delight when their child is kind to others, but expresses little
reaction when their child shows imagination. Will the child rate
him/herself highly on both kindness and imagination? Or will
he/she focus on his/her kindness, and downplay his/her imagin-
ation? Selective parental expressiveness may highlight specific
types of behavior to the child, rendering them more salient in
the child’s memory (Dunsmore, Halberstadt, Eaton, &
Robinson, 2005) and thus emphasizing them more in his/her
self-perceptions. Low intensity, overt parental emotion
communication of either valence may alert a child to the
importance of a given behavior or interpersonal exchange,
enhancing learning without overwhelming the ability to
effectively process information (Dunsmore & Halberstadt,
1997).
A related way that parents’ specific emotional responses may
influence children’s domain-specific self-concepts is through
the metric of parental standards. A parent’s joy not only signals
the importance of the type of behavior, but implies the child
has met a standard that the parent implicitly or explicitly holds
for the child. Parental disapproval, disappointment or other
communication of negative emotion about a child’s behavior
indicates the child has violated or fallen short of a standard or
expectation. Sadness in particular is thought to represent an
acceptance of a disappointing outcome or of irrevocable loss
(Lazarus, 1991; Stein & Jewett, 1986). If directed toward a
child in response to his/her behavior, parental sadness may
convey a sense of inevitability or hopelessness to the child. For
instance, parental sadness upon hearing of a child’s conduct or
achievement failure may signal to the child a disappointed
“recognition” of the failure as “true” of him/her, and thus the
child may describe him/herself accordingly low on this trait.
Parental anger, on the other hand, might signal more of a viola-
tion of a standard, with the implication that the child could act
differently, thus protecting the child’s sense of competence.
Investigating these specific emotional communications in
relation to children’s multidimensional self-concepts adds
important information to our understanding of the family
context of children’s developing sense of self.
Salience model
Finally, mothers’ typical pattern of emotional expressiveness
may moderate the influence of her specific emotional responses
to her child’s behavior on children’s domain-specific self-
concepts. Set against a backdrop of general parental warmth
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2009, 33 (3), 253–264
and acceptance, high expectations and appropriate reinforce-
ment of them are associated with high self-esteem and social
and academic competence in middle-class and Caucasian
youth and children (Harter, 1999; Maccoby & Martin, 1983).
However, unrealistically high parental standards or high expec-
tations without compensatory warmth are linked to poor self-
schemas and low self-esteem (Harter, 1999).
Specific emotional responses may be more or less salient to
children depending on how consistent they are with parents’
typical expressive style. If parents’ specific emotional response
differs from their typical expressiveness – for example, if they
display high levels of negative affect in response to children’s
behavior when they typically express low negative affect at
home – this might especially heighten children’s attention to
the behavior, increasing the likelihood that children will
internalize this information as relevant to their sense of self
(Dunsmore & Halberstadt, 1997). Conversely, parents’ specific
emotional expressions that are consistent with their expressive
style may be more easily interpreted by children. Because they
fit the expressive pattern children are accustomed to, such
emotional responses may take less effort to process, which may
facilitate children’s linkage of their behavior to their self-
concept. Consistent with this, preschool children’s recognition
of positive emotions is more accurate when their mothers are
high in positive expressiveness (Dunsmore & Smallen, 2001)
and their memory is better for events associated with mothers’
specific emotional expressions that fit their typical expressive
style (Dunsmore et al., 2005).
The present study
We investigated two dimensions of 8- to12-year-old children’s
self-concepts in relation to maternal emotional expressiveness
and specific emotional responses to children’s behavior. We
chose two domains important to parents, prosocial behavioral
conduct and achievement. In regard to mothers’ typical
expressiveness at home, we addressed linear and quadratic
functions of positive, negative-dominant, and negative-submis-
sive emotions. In regard to mothers’ specific emotional
responses to children’s behavior, we included mothers’ happy,
angry, and sad reactions to their child’s descriptions of
behavior that reflected success and failure in the two domains
(prosocial behavior and achievement).
Pragmatic and ecological validity concerns precluded
attempting to elicit children’s prosocial and achievement-
related behavior in the lab in order to observe mothers’
emotional responses. So, we borrowed from the emotion elic-
itation (Levenson, Carstensen, Friesen, & Ekman, 1991) and
interpersonal interaction (Burnett, 1991; Metts, Sprecher, &
Cupach, 1991) literatures by asking children to describe times
when they had done something nice for someone or done well
at something (success in prosocial behavior and achievement)
and times when they had done something mean to someone or
done badly at something (failure in prosocial behavior and
achievement). This technique has the disadvantage of relying
on mothers’ and children’s retrospective evaluation of mothers’
emotional reactions to children’s behavior. However, it has the
advantage of allowing children to select personally meaningful
experiences to discuss with their mothers. Retrospective evalu-
ations of emotions tend to focus on peak and end moments of
emotional intensity (Fredrickson, 2000; Fredrickson &
Kahneman, 1993), and retrospective evaluations of inter-
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255
actions tend to highlight consistent patterns (Metts et al.,
1991). Because the theoretical models we are testing empha-
size consistent patterns of expressivity and of specific
emotional responses to types of behavior, we considered these
characteristics of retrospective evaluations to be, if anything,
advantageous for our purpose.
Both fathers and mothers play important roles in emotion
socialization. We focus on mothers in this study. Children in
the age range of our sample report both greater expression of
emotion to mothers than fathers and greater expectation of
positive response to their emotional expression from mothers
than fathers (Fuchs & Thelen, 1988). We therefore chose to
focus exclusively on mothers to maximize the potential that
children would provide rich descriptions of their memories
about success and failure for prosocial behavior and achieve-
ment when talking with their parent.
Late childhood represents an especially interesting time in
which to study linkages between parent emotion socialization
and children’s domain-specific self-ratings. At this time
children’s sense of self has changed from focusing on concrete,
observable characteristics to incorporating more differentiated
traits into their self-concept (Harter, 1999; Montemayor &
Eisen, 1977). Children have also become increasingly adept at
abstracting connections between single self-descriptors in
comparing themselves to their peers (Harter, 1999). Concen-
trating on late childhood both provides a lens on a develop-
mentally important time period in the emergent sense of self
and maximizes the potential for variance in differential self-
concepts (Harter, 1999; Marsh et al., 1998).
We systematically tested the three models described in the
preceding review. The general approval model suggests that
higher maternal typical positive expressiveness will predict
children’s higher self-ratings for both prosocial and achieve-
ment-related traits, regardless of how mothers respond to the
specifics of their children’s reported memories. Similarly, we
expected that mothers’ lower typical expression of negative
affect, especially negative-dominant expressiveness, would
predict higher prosocial and achievement-related self-ratings.
We also tested for quadratic relations of maternal expressive
styles to children’s self-ratings.
The selective parental socialization model would be supported
by specific linkages of mothers’ happiness, anger, and sadness
in response to children’s prosocial behavior with children’s
prosocial self-ratings, and not with children’s achievement-
related self-ratings, and the parallel pattern for mothers’
emotional responses to children’s achievement-related
behavior. We expected that greater maternal happiness in
response to prosocial behavior (and achievement) would be
linked with children’s higher self-ratings for prosocial behavior
(and achievement). Based on the core relational themes of
anger and sadness (e.g., Lazarus, 1991; Stein & Jewett, 1986),
we predicted that children whose mothers responded with
greater sadness to antisocial behavior (and failure to achieve)
would report lower prosocial (or achievement-related) self-
ratings, whereas those whose mothers responded with greater
anger to antisocial behavior (and failure to achieve) might
report higher prosocial (or achievement-related) self-ratings.
Finally, the salience model would be supported by interactions
between mothers’ specific emotional responses and typical
expressive styles showing domain-specific linkages to children’s
prosocial and achievement-related self-ratings. Theoretically,
we expected that mismatches between mothers’ specific
emotional response to the child’s behavior and their typical
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256 DUNSMORE ET AL. / MOTHER’S EXPRESSIVE STYLE AND EMOTIONAL RESPONSES TO CHILDREN’S BEHAVIOR
expressive style would be related to children’s self-ratings. For
example, children whose mothers are typically low in negative-
dominant expressiveness, yet respond with a high degree of
anger when the child fails to achieve, would rate themselves
highly in achievement-related traits, because the atypically
intense anger would augment the message that the child had
done badly at something very important and was capable of
better. However, because of the empirical research we cited
earlier, we also thought it possible that matches in mothers’
specific emotional response and typical expressive style might
be related to children’s self-ratings.
Method
Participants
Seventy-two 8- to 12-year-old children (50% girls; age M =
10.11 years, SD = .81) and their mothers (age M = 39.62
years, SD = 3.78) participated. By parental report, children
were African-American (9.7%), Asian-American (1.4%),
European-American (86.1%), and Hispanic American (2.8%).
Ninety percent of the children lived in two-parent households.
Most (67.6%) of the children had one sibling living in their
home, 23.9% had two siblings living in their home, and
8.5% of the children had no siblings. Parents were generally
well educated; all had completed high school, and most (71%
of fathers, 65% of mothers) had college or graduate degrees.
Most parents had professional or semi-professional jobs (e.g.,
physicians, professors, graphic artists, restaurateurs, retail
sales). Participants were recruited through letters distributed
through public and private schools, flyers, advertisements,
and word of mouth. Mothers were given $10 and children
were given a $5 gift certificate to a toy or bookstore for
participating.
Procedure
The first author conducted all sessions. Participants were given
the choice of coming to the lab or participating in their home.
Most families (74%) chose to participate in their home. The
lab was furnished with toys and appealing posters to provide a
family-friendly atmosphere. Trained undergraduates assisted
with videotaping in the lab. At families’ homes, videotaping was
monitored in an unobtrusive manner and any other family
members in the home were occupied so the children and
mothers could participate with as little interruption as possible.
There were no significant differences on any variables accord-
ing to whether families participated in the home or the lab
(all |t|s < 1, all ps > .30). Children and mothers first played
the memory-cuing game (described below). Children then
completed the self-schema questionnaire, and mothers
completed a questionnaire packet including the Self-
expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire (Halberstadt,
Cassidy, Stifter, Parke, & Fox, 1995). Sessions lasted approxi-
mately one hour.
In the memory-cuing game, mothers and children took turns
drawing cards. Children’s cards provided the four behavioral
cues – prosocial (did something nice); antisocial (did some-
thing mean); achievement (did well at something); and failure
to achieve (did badly at something). Cards instructed children
to think of a time they had behaved in the way indicated and
to describe their memory of that event to their mother as
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vividly as possible. Neither mothers nor children read the cards
out loud so they would focus on the child’s description and not
on the cues when subsequently completing ratings. Other than
not reading the cards out loud, mothers and children were told
that they could talk and act as usual, including asking each
other questions about the memories or making comments. The
first author noted card order and monitored the game to
ensure that children’s memory descriptions fit the card and did
not overlap categories. In no case was it necessary to redirect
the children’s memory descriptions.
After children described each memory, mothers and
children marked 10-centimeter long lines to rate how much
happiness, sadness, and anger mothers had felt when they had
found out about the behavior the child had described. They
were reminded to mark all three of the emotion lines each time,
because people can feel more than one emotion at a time.
Rating sheets were placed in boxes when completed, and the
person who had just described a memory placed a token on
the gameboard, a colorful unfinished picture. Conclusion of
the memory-cuing game was signaled by placing the final token
on the picture.
Materials
Children’s self-schema questionnaire. Children rated, on a 9-
point Likert scale, the self-descriptiveness and importance of
five prosocial traits (forgiving, helpful, honest, loving, and nice)
and five achievement-related traits (capable, doing well at
things, imaginative, intelligent, and logical).1 Children were
offered cards with brief developmentally appropriate defi-
nitions of the traits to aid them in completing the question-
naire. For example, “imaginative” was defined as “creative; able
to think of new ideas.”
Children’s self-ratings of the descriptiveness of the prosocial
traits were summed and then standardized, as were children’s
self-ratings of the descriptiveness of the achievement-related
traits. Internal consistency of each subscale was good
(Cronbach’s alpha = .75 for prosocial and .73 for achievement).
Self-expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire (SEFQ; Halberstadt
et al., 1995). Mothers rated, on a 9-point Likert scale (1 =
not at all to 9 = very), how frequently they express emotions
in certain situations in the family. This 40-item instrument
yields three subscales: (a) positive expressiveness (e.g., “Telling
family members how happy you are”), (b) negative-dominant
expressiveness (e.g., “Blaming one another for family
troubles”), and (c) negative-submissive expressiveness (e.g.,
“Crying after an unpleasant disagreement”). The SEFQ has
been validated with a variety of other measures (Halberstadt
et al., 1995; see Halberstadt et al., 1999, for a review). Internal
consistency for each subscale was excellent (Cronbach’s alpha
= .90 for positive expressiveness, .86 for negative-dominant
expressiveness, and .79 for negative-submissive expressiveness).
1 Importance ratings were included to explore the self-schema categorization
approach used with adults (Catrambone & Markus, 1987; Fong & Markus, 1982;
Markus, 1977; Markus et al., 1982, 1985). The pattern of results using this
categorical approach paralleled that reported here using children’s dimensional
self-ratings of trait descriptiveness.
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2009, 33 (3), 253–264 257

Table 1
Descriptive statistics for and correlations among study variables

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 M ( SD) Range

1 Mothers’ happiness – prosocial .13 .06** .06 .12 .23† .18* –.03*** –.23*** .39*** .27*** 15.59 (5.01) 0–20
2 Mothers’ anger – antisocial — .34** .13 –.17 .13* .11* .04*** .24*** –.10*** .27*** 10.78 (5.10) 0–20
3 Mothers’ sadness – antisocial — .18 –.04 .28* .25* .09*** –.12*** .07*** –.07*** 7.42 (5.32) 0–20
4 Mothers’ happiness – achievement — .15 –.09* .05* –.04*** –.01*** .17*** .23*** 17.41 (3.84) 4.9–20
5 Mothers’ anger – failure to achieve — .08* .02* –.18*** –.11*** .07*** .11*** 8.74 (5.67) 0–19.3
6 Mothers’ sadness – failure to achieve — –.04* .04*** .02*** .10*** –.02*** 9.32 (5.51) 0–20
7 Mothers’ positive expressiveness — .41*** .10*** –.20†** .09*** 7.04 (.98) 3.84–8.79
8 Mothers’ negative submissive-expressiveness — .58*** –.12*** –.07*** 4.94 (1.30) 2.30–8.70
9 Mothers’ negative dominant-expressiveness — –.26*** .00*** 3.76 (1.23) 2.00–7.73
10 Children’s prosocial self-rating — .43*** 7.24 (1.25) 3.80–9
11 Children’s achievement self-rating — 7.27 (1.19) 4.20–8.80

Note. †p < .10; *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

Results mothers’ ratings for each emotional response to each behavior

Preliminary analyses
We first calculated correlations of all variables with children’s
age. Mothers of older children reported more anger about
children’s antisocial behavior, r = .26, p < .05.Younger children
rated mothers as happier about their achievement behavior,
r = –.33, p < .01. Mothers of older children reported more
negative-dominant expressiveness, r = .24, p < .05. There was
no relation of children’s age with their self-descriptiveness
ratings for prosocial or achievement-related traits.
Research suggests that mother–daughter dyads talk more
about emotions than mother–son dyads (Flannagan & Perese,
1998) and that girls include more affiliative themes in their
autobiographical narratives than do boys (Buckner & Fivush,
1998). To investigate whether gender differences may influence
our findings, we conducted t tests on mothers’ expressiveness
in the family, ratings of mothers’ emotional reactions, and
children’s self-ratings. Mothers of sons reported greater
positive expressiveness compared to mothers of daughters,
t(70) = 2.02, p < .05. Mothers of sons reported greater happi-
ness about their child’s prosocial behavior than mothers of
daughters, t(70) = 2.78, p < .01. Boys rated their mothers as
angrier about their antisocial behavior than did girls, t(70) =
2.22, p < .05. There were no gender differences in children’s
self-ratings of prosocial and achievement-related traits.
Children’s age and gender were not considered further in the
analyses reported below.2
Finally, because clarity in parental emotional communi-
cation may be significant in children’s interpretation and
outcomes (Halberstadt et al., 1999), we thought it important
to examine concordance in children’s and mothers’ ratings of
mothers’ emotional responses. Children’s and mothers’ ratings
for each emotion in response to each behavior tended to be
positively correlated (average r = .43, minimum r = .05,
maximum r = .61). For both mothers’ and children’s ratings,
correlations between emotion ratings for exemplifications
(emotion ratings for prosocial behavior correlated with those
for achievement) and violations (emotion ratings for antisocial
behavior correlated with those for failure to achieve) tended to
be low (average rs = .09 and .14, respectively; minimum r =
–.15, maximum r = .31). Thus, we summed children’s and
2 Controlling for child age and gender did not alter our pattern of results.
to form six composite variables of interest: mothers’ happiness
in response to child prosocial behavior, mothers’ happiness in
response to child achievement, mothers’ sadness in response to
child antisocial behavior, mothers’ anger in response to child
antisocial behavior, and mothers’ sadness and anger in
response to child failure to achieve. Descriptive statistics for
and correlations among these composite variables, mothers’
typical expressive styles, and children’s self-descriptiveness
ratings are presented in Table 1.
Testing the general approval model
We conducted a repeated-measures ANOVA to test the general
approval model. Repeated criterion variables were children’s
prosocial and achievement-related self-ratings. Type of self-
rating was a within-subjects predictor variable. The between-
subjects predictor variables were mothers’ positive,
negative-dominant, and negative-submissive expressiveness
and their quadratic functions. We reduced the model using a
backwards stepwise approach with α = .05. We report the
reduced model. We found a main effect for type of self-rating,
F(1,67) = 9.92, p < .01. Furthermore, mothers’ positive
expressiveness interacted with type of rating to predict
children’s self-ratings, F(1,67) = 9.35, p < .01, as did mothers’
negative-dominant expressiveness, F(1,67) = 8.43, p < .01, and
negative-submissive expressiveness, F(1,67) = 4.92, p < .05.
We calculated generalized eta squared (η2G), which is preferred
as an effect size statistic for repeated measures designs like ours
(Bakeman, 2005). Effect sizes were small (η2G = .03, .03, and
.02 for the interactions of type of rating with mothers’ positive,
negative-dominant, and negative-submissive expressiveness,
respectively).
To depict the findings, we formed three groups for each type
of family expressiveness: (a) those whose scores were more
than one standard deviation below the mean, (b) those whose
scores were more than one standard deviation above the mean,
and (c) those whose scores were within one standard deviation
of the mean (Aiken & West, 1991). We then plotted least-square
means for children’s self-ratings for each group. These are
shown in Figure 1. As Figure 1 shows, mothers’ positive
expressiveness was negatively related to children’s prosocial
self-rating and positively related to children’s achievement-
related self-rating. Mothers’ negative-dominant expressiveness
was also negatively related to children’s prosocial self-rating

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258 DUNSMORE ET AL. / MOTHER’S EXPRESSIVE STYLE AND EMOTIONAL RESPONSES TO CHILDREN’S BEHAVIOR

0.8

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Children’s self-ratings (z scores)

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Figure 1. Children’s self-ratings in relation to mothers’ positive, negative-dominant, and negative-submissive expressiveness.

and not strongly related to children’s achievement-related self- antisocial behavior, F(1,65) = 4.26, p < .05. Effect sizes were
rating. Finally, mothers’ negative-submissive expressiveness small to medium (η2G = .11, .04, and .03 for mothers’ happi-
was positively related to children’s prosocial self-rating and ness in response to children’s prosocial behavior, happiness in
negatively related to children’s achievement-related self-rating, response to children’s achievement, and anger in response to
but only at high levels of negative-submissive expressiveness. children’s antisocial behavior, respectively). A follow-up
univariate analysis predicting the composite of children’s self-
ratings for both prosocial behavior and achievement showed
Testing the selective parental socialization model that children’s self-ratings were higher when mothers
We conducted a repeated-measures ANOVA to test the selec- responded with more happiness to children’s prosocial (β =
tive parental expressiveness model. Repeated criterion vari- .43) and achievement-related behavior (β = .27). Children’s
ables were children’s prosocial and achievement-related self-ratings were lower when mothers responded with more
self-ratings. Type of self-rating was a within-subjects predictor anger to children’s antisocial behavior (β = –.25).
variable. Between-subjects predictor variables were ratings of
mothers’ happiness in response to children’s prosocial
behavior, happiness in response to children’s achievement,
Testing the salience model
sadness in response to children’s antisocial behavior, sadness We conducted two repeated-measures ANOVAs to test the
in response to children’s failure to achieve, anger in response salience model. For both, repeated criterion variables were
to children’s antisocial behavior, and anger in response to children’s prosocial and achievement-related self-ratings and
children’s failure to achieve. A backwards stepwise model type of self-rating was a within-subjects predictor variable.
reduction strategy was used, with α = .05; the reduced model The first ANOVA tested between-subjects predictor variables
is reported below. relevant to children’s prosocial behavior, including interactions
Three between-subjects effects were found. Children’s self- between ratings of mothers’ response to children’s prosocial/
ratings for both prosocial behavior and achievement were antisocial behavior and mothers’ parallel typical expressive
predicted by mothers’ happiness in response to children’s style (e.g., mothers’ anger in response to children’s antisocial
prosocial behavior, F(1,68) = 14.53, p < .001; by mothers’ behavior interacting with mothers’ negative-dominant
happiness in response to children’s achievement, F(1,68) = expressive style).The second ANOVA did the same with predic-
4.97, p < .05; and by mothers’ anger in response to children’s tor variables relevant to children’s achievement-related

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2009, 33 (3), 253–264 259

0.8

0.6

0.4
Children’s self-ratings (z scores)

Low sadness about failure to achieve –

0.2 prosocial self-rating
Low sadness about failure to achieve –
competence self-rating
0 High sadness about failure to achieve –
prosocial self-rating
High sadness about failure to achieve –
–0.2 competence self-rating

–0.4

–0.6

–0.8

–1
Low negative Mid negative High negative
submissiveness submissiveness submissiveness

Figure 2. Children’s self-ratings as a function of mothers’ sadness in response to failure to achieve and negative-submissive expressiveness.

behavior.3 A backwards stepwise model reduction strategy was mothers who were typically high in expressing negative-
used, with α = .05. The reduced models are reported below. submissive emotion were rated high in sadness in response to
The ANOVA including ratings of mothers’ responses to children’s failure to achieve.4
prosocial/antisocial behavior yielded no new effects. On the
other hand, the ANOVA including ratings of mothers’
responses to achievement/failure to achieve did yield new Discussion
effects. Children’s self-ratings were predicted by the interaction
between the type of self-rating and mothers’ sadness in Both mothers’ typical expressivity in the family and their
response to children’s failure to achieve, F(1,67) = 4.19, p < specific emotional responses to children’s behavior were
.05. This interaction was subsumed within the significant uniquely and additively related to children’s descriptions of
three-way interaction of type of self-rating, mothers’ sadness in themselves as prosocial or achieving. Because we tested both
response to children’s failure to achieve, and mothers’ more distal, background emotional climate and proximal,
negative-submissive expressiveness, F(1,67) = 4.36, p < .05. contingent maternal emotional communications, we were able
The effect size of this three-way interaction was small (η2G = to distill relations between them in connection to children’s
.02). We conducted a median split on mothers’ sadness and a sense of self. Our focus on type as well as intensity of negative
tripartite split on mothers’ negative-submissive expressiveness emotion and our empirical examination of mothers’ and
to depict this interaction in Figure 2. As Figure 2 shows, children’s sending/receiving of affective communication
children’s self-ratings for achievement were lower when (Halberstadt, Denham, & Dunsmore, 2001) represent
substantial contributions called for in a recent review

3 For the first ANOVA, the full list of between-subject predictor variables is

as follows: mothers’ happiness about children’s prosocial behavior, mothers’

anger about children’s antisocial behavior, mothers’ sadness about children’s 4 We conducted one final repeated-measures ANOVA to examine whether

antisocial behavior, mothers’ positive expressiveness, mothers’ negative-
dominant expressiveness, mothers’ negative-submissive expressiveness, inter-
action of mothers’ happiness about prosocial behavior with positive
expressiveness, interaction of mothers’ anger about antisocial behavior with
negative-dominant expressiveness, and interaction of mothers’ sadness about
antisocial behavior with negative-submissive expressiveness. For the second
ANOVA, the full list of between-subject predictor variables is parallel, with
achievement/failure to achieve as the focus of mothers’ response.
the effects in the general approval, selective parental socialization, and salience
models remained significant at α = .05 when all effects were included. All did,
except for (a) the interaction between type of self-rating and mothers’ negative-
submissive expressiveness (F(1,62) = .18, p > .65), which is subsumed within
the three-way interaction in the salience model, and (b) the between-subjects
effect for mothers’ anger in response to children’s antisocial behavior (F(1,62) =
3.96, p < .06), which retained the same pattern of association despite no longer
meeting our alpha level.

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260 DUNSMORE ET AL. / MOTHER’S EXPRESSIVE STYLE AND EMOTIONAL RESPONSES TO CHILDREN’S BEHAVIOR
(Halberstadt et al., 1999). We discuss how our results address
the three models we described in the introduction below.
General approval model
We expected that mothers’ reports of their typical expressive-
ness would predict their children’s ratings across domains,
such that high positive and moderate negative expressivity
would be associated with high self-concept ratings for both
prosocial behavior and achievement. Contrary to these expec-
tations, mothers’ typical expressivity was differentially related
to children’s self-ratings according to the type of expressivity
and domain of self-concept. Mothers’ typical positive and
negative-dominant expressivity were negatively related to
children’s prosocial self-ratings, but positively related (positive
expressivity) or relatively unrelated (negative-dominant) to
children’s achievement-related self-ratings. In contrast,
maternal typical negative-submissive expressivity negatively
predicted children’s achievement-related self-ratings, but was
positively related to their prosocial self-ratings. The consistent
discrepancy between linkages to different self-concept domains
appears to rule out an explanation based on a global sense of
self-worth that might have elevated or lowered ratings in both
self-concept domains.
The positive association of mothers’ positive expressivity
with children’s achievement-related self-ratings is consistent
with extant literature. The negative association between
maternal typical positive expressiveness and children’s self-
rated prosocial traits was unanticipated. Positive family expres-
siveness has been linked to early elementary school age
children’s prosocial behavior (Halberstadt et al., 1999), though
these studies did not assess children’s self-descriptions.
However, an observational study with kindergarteners showed
that, with child affect controlled, parent positive affect in same-
sex parent–child pairs predicted poorer social competence
(Isley, O’Neil, Clatfelter, & Parke, 1999). Parental positive
affect that is not directly related to or reciprocal with a child
may be confusing or alienating to the child (Isley et al., 1999),
or may reflect a defensive, Pollyanna quality that denies
authentic emotional experience, a maternal style that is
associated with more antisocial behavior in some children
(Bowlby, 1980; Weinfield, Sroufe, Egeland, & Carlson, 1999).
However, in this case we might expect to have found a curvi-
linear association linking mothers’ moderate positive expressiv-
ity and children’s greater prosocial self-ratings compared to
either extreme (as similar to Valiente et al., 2004). Yet, though
we tested for such a curvilinear association, it was not
supported.
Alternatively, the negative associations may paradoxically
underscore previously found relations between high positive
expressivity and child self-esteem. In other words, these
children may be emotionally secure or mature enough to
somewhat leaven their prosocial self-ratings. Replication in
other samples will help determine what may underlie this
association.
Findings for maternal negative expressiveness varied by type
of negative emotion in interesting ways. Higher rates of
maternal negative-dominant expressivity at home may be more
relevant to children’s views of their prosocial behavior than
achievement because anger and related affects are so intimately
tied to active engagement in interpersonal relationships
(Bowlby, 1973; Lazarus, 1991). Indeed, previous studies have
found high levels of anger expressed at home associated with
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children’s lower social competence (Halberstadt et al., 1999).
The effects may also work the other way: children who are less
prosocial may engender more negative affect in their mothers
at home. We discuss negative-submissive expressivity below,
because that effect was subsumed within the interaction
including sadness about child failure to achieve. We note also
that, though we tested for quadratic relations between maternal
negative-dominant and negative-submissive expressiveness and
children’s self-ratings, these were not substantiated.
In summary, though our findings were not what we expected
for the general approval model, they do confirm that parents’
typical expressive styles are linked to children’s self-concept.
Our findings also suggest that background emotional “climate”
may operate more specifically or through more proximal
channels to influence children’s sense of themselves. One more
proximal channel is mothers’ specific emotional responses to
children’s behavior.
Selective parental socialization model
We had expected domain-specific effects on children’s self-
ratings for mothers’ specific responses, yet they appeared to
have more pervasive effects, showing associations across both
domains. As predicted, mothers’ happiness in response to
children’s prosocial behavior and in response to children’s
achievement each uniquely predict children’s higher self-
ratings – but in both domains. Though neither happiness
response is significantly correlated with mothers’ typical
positive expressiveness in the family, it may be that these
ratings of mothers’ happiness about children’s prosocial and
achievement-related behavior are more precise indicators of
mothers’ typical positive expressiveness towards her child in
particular. Thus, we are inclined to interpret this finding as
consistent with the general approval model.
Contrary to our expectation for mothers’ specific anger
response based on the core relational theme of anger (Lazarus,
1991; Stein & Jewett, 1986), but consistent with empirical
literature on typical negative-dominant expressivity, mothers’
anger at children’s antisocial behavior (but not failure to
achieve) predicted children’s lower self-ratings across both
domains. This specific link between anger about children’s
antisocial behavior and both self-ratings may be consistent with
other research showing that academic self-concept and
problems are unrelated to global self-esteem (Crocker &
Luhtanen, 2003; Marsh & Craven, 2006), whereas social
problems are so related (Crocker & Luhtanen, 2003).
Parents’ anger is linked to children’s experience of shame,
which is characterized by global negative evaluations of oneself
(Eisenberg, 2000; Ferguson & Stegge, 1995; Lazarus, 1991).
Because antisocial behaviors discussed by parents and children
in this study necessarily involved harm to others (doing some-
thing mean), parents might be especially likely to respond with
anger and children might be especially likely to experience
shame about their antisocial behavior, which may result in
lower overall self-ratings. Alternatively, shame-proneness is
negatively related to perspective-taking and empathy (Tangney,
1991). Thus, children who tend toward global negative self-
evaluations may also tend to behave less empathically toward
others, which may elicit parental anger about antisocial
behavior or lack of prosocial behavior.
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2009, 33 (3), 253–264 261

Salience model It will be important in future research to work with cultural

groups with varying display rules and beliefs about emotions
Finally, in the salience model, we expected domain-specific
and about the sense of self. For example, expression of
effects for the combination of maternal-specific emotional
negative-dominant emotions like anger may be more accept-
responses to children’s behavior with mothers’ typical pattern
able in working-class than middle-class American families
of emotional expression. Here, mothers’ negative-submissive
(Miller, Cho, & Bracey, 2005; Miller & Sperry, 1987). Indeed,
expressive style provided a backdrop against which mothers’
within working-class families, dramatized expression of
specific response of sadness about children’s failure to achieve
negative-dominant emotions through personal narratives may
predicted children’s achievement-related self-rating. Earlier we
function both to support the child’s sense of autonomy and
speculated that maternal sadness about specific child actions
resilience and to promote social status (Miller et al., 2005).
might convey a sense of impotence to a child. Achievement
When this is the case, the inverse relation we found between
may involve agency to a greater extent than prosocial behavior;
parental negative-dominant expressiveness and child prosocial
for example, a child may consider passive “niceness” to be
self-ratings may not hold. Instead, within moderate levels of
prosocial. Thus, achievement may be more vulnerable to
negative-dominant expressiveness, there may be positive
depressed self-concept if the child feels the parent does not
associations between parental expressiveness and child proso-
believe in his agency.
cial and achievement-related self-ratings.
Moreover, our results suggest that contingent maternal
Similarly, cultural differences in the sense of self might affect
sadness by itself is not particularly influential. Rather, the
relations between parental emotion socialization and children’s
match between higher maternal sadness about failure to
self-ratings. European-American children’s self-descriptions
achieve and higher typical maternal negative-submissive
include more positive and fewer neutral characteristics
expressivity appears most detrimental for children’s achieve-
compared with Chinese children’s self-descriptions (Wang,
ment-related self-rating. This is roughly consistent with
2004). When the sense of self is less focused on evaluating one’s
previous work showing moderating effects of parental positive
unique characteristics and more focused on describing one’s
expressive style on children’s emotion-recognition accuracy
social interconnections, parental emotional responses to
and memory related to parents’ specific positive emotional
behaviors and expressive styles may be interpreted as less
expressions (Dunsmore et al., 2005; Dunsmore & Smallen,
meaningful for achievement-related self-ratings, thereby atten-
2001). These results suggest that sensitivity, rather than salience,
uating those relations. Relations with prosocial self-ratings may
may be the better name for this model. In fact, when mothers
remain or strengthen because prosocial self-ratings may be
reacted more intensely than typically – that is, they displayed
more relevant for social interconnections than achievement-
relatively high levels of contingent sadness but low levels of
related self-ratings.
negative-submissive emotion at home – children rated them-
We chose to examine three basic maternal emotions, happi-
selves higher on achievement. Thus, it appears that children’s
ness, sadness, and anger, because they are easily understand-
general exposure to higher rates of sadness-related affect in
able for children in the age range of our sample, commonly
their mothers may constitute a risk factor for poor achieve-
experienced and expressed in family life, and parallel the
ment-related sense of self, a risk that becomes amplified by
dimensions of expressive style measured by the SEFQ. Self-
their mothers’ sad reactions to an instance of their achievement
conscious emotions, such as embarrassment or guilt, are also
failure.
commonly reported parental responses to children’s socially
This may not be a passive process; children may have framed
undesirable behavior (Mills & Rubin, 1990). Parental pride,
their narratives to elicit particular emotions from their
guilt, and shame about their children’s behavior may also
mothers, perhaps to reinforce their own self-concepts.
convey salient information to children about the relevance of
Maternal sadness at home may set the stage for children’s
their behavior for their sense of self. The meaning conveyed by
vulnerable sense of achievement-related self, perhaps due to
these self-conscious emotional responses may vary according
lower rates of positive engagement and structuring,
to the family’s cultural context. For example, cultural values in
components important in children’s competence and achieve-
the Netherlands are considered to be more individualistic
ment motivation (Wigfield, Eccles, Schiefele, Roesner, &
compared with cultural values in Spain, which emphasize
Davis-Kean, 2006). Lower sense of achievement-related abili-
family honor and relation. For Dutch children, adolescents and
ties, in turn, may cause the child to act in ways that reinforce
adults, shame is more strongly linked with the self compared
that belief, including provoking maternal emotions of resigna-
with Spanish children, adolescents and adults (Mosquera,
tion and sadness, and intensifying children’s lower sense of
Manstead, & Fischer, 2000). Testing our mechanism models
achievement.
with culturally disparate groups would contribute to under-
standing more about the underlying principles guiding
parental emotion socialization and children’s self-concept in
Strengths, limitations, and future directions late childhood.
Several limitations of the study suggest caution in generalizing Future work examining linkages between fathers’ expressive
the results. Our study included a relatively small, well-off styles and emotional responses with children’s self-ratings will
sample from a university community, in which mothers may also provide an important extension of our results. Different
have higher achievement aspirations for their children, and patterns may be seen with fathers. Fathers report more mini-
children for themselves, than other groups. We do not know mization of children’s sadness than do mothers, and less use of
how consistent children’s perceptions of their own traits might problem-focused coping (Cassano, Perry-Parish, & Zeman,
be with measures of their prosocial behavior and achievement. 2007). Children’s social competence is positively related to
We note that, as with similar samples, mothers’ positive expres- mothers’ positive interactions, and negatively related to fathers’
siveness was rather high, and few children rated themselves controlling behavior (McDowell, Kim, O’Neil, & Parke, 2002).
below the midpoint on any of the items. In African and Caribbean families, fathers have primary

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262 DUNSMORE ET AL. / MOTHER’S EXPRESSIVE STYLE AND EMOTIONAL RESPONSES TO CHILDREN’S BEHAVIOR
responsibility for their children’s academic and behavioral
competence and mothers have primary responsibility for
children’s daily care and emotional functioning (Roopnarine,
2004; Roopnarine, Krishnakumar, Metindogan, & Evans,
2006). Thus, the distinctive role of fathers in socialization of
children’s achievement-related self-perceptions may warrant
particular attention. However, what may be most important in
impacting children’s sense of self may not be parent gender per
se but rather the meaning conveyed to children by parents’
emotional responses within the context of parents’ expressive
style and cultural values (Dunsmore & Halberstadt, 1997).
Perhaps the most important limitation in our method is the
retrospective bias inherent in our measurement of mothers’
emotional responses to children’s behaviors. Eliciting
children’s prosocial and achievement-related behavior in the
lab in order to observe mothers’ emotional response was
impractical, so we elected to ask children to recount past
behavior. Because children decided what to tell their mothers,
there is a high degree of heterogeneity in the behaviors they
recounted. For example, some children may have selected rela-
tively minor violations, whereas others may have revealed more
serious transgressions. However, this variability may also repre-
sent a strength of the study because children were able to select
personally meaningful experiences to discuss with their
mothers. Nonetheless, we remain cognizant that our measure
of maternal emotional responses is far from isomorphic with
mothers’ actual emotional expression at the time of the
behavior. Rather, linkages of mothers’ emotional responses
with children’s self-ratings may well reflect mother–child
emotional communication when the child was recounting the
experience just prior to completing the self-questionnaire.
Despite these limitations, this study makes an important
contribution to understanding the relationship between
parental emotion communication and children’s sense of self.
Whether ratings of mothers’ emotional responses reflect
current or past emotional communication, they are connected
to children’s self-ratings, as are mothers’ typical expressive
styles. Most critically, this study points to considerable linkage
specificity. Type of maternal affective communication, specific
emotional responses to child behaviors, typical expressive
patterns, and self-concept domain all matter in differential
patterns of association. Maternal negative-submissive emotion,
at home and in response to children’s behavior, was most
tightly linked to children’s achievement-related self-ratings.
Maternal negative-dominant expressiveness was more robustly
related to children’s prosocial self-ratings, whereas maternal
positive expressiveness was related to both children’s prosocial
and achievement self-ratings, with opposing associations.
Mothers’ specific positive reactions to both prosocial and
achievement-related behavior and negative-dominant reactions
to prosocial behavior were related to children’s overall self-
concept. In sum, our results suggest that the general accept-
ance, selective parental socialization, and sensitization models
are complementary, each examining a different level of
analysis. Just as parents’ expressive style may provide a
backdrop against which domain-specific emotional responses
are more or less salient, children’s sense of general acceptance
may provide a backdrop against which domain-specific self-
ratings are more or less differentiated.
In conclusion, our results strongly support the utility of a
nuanced, multidimensional approach to investigating maternal
emotional communication and children’s sense of self. Our
results also provide a tantalizing hint of the developmental
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processes that may link parents’ emotion socialization with
children’s sense of self. To the extent that parents’ expressive
styles and patterns of emotional responses seen when children
are in late childhood are consistent with those present when
children were in early childhood, and remain consistent across
the transition to adolescence, we expect our findings to gener-
alize to younger and older age groups. With younger children,
however, linkages of parental emotion socialization with
children’s sense of general acceptance may be stronger than
domain-specific associations because the sense of self is less
differentiated in early childhood than late childhood. With
adolescents’ increased differentiation, focus on identity
development, and sensitivity to evaluation, linkages may be
even stronger. Future longitudinal research with a more
diverse sample, focused on how differential types of affective
communication link to development of self-concept across
early and middle childhood through adolescence and beyond,
will be fruitful in determining how these patterns of typical
and domain-specific emotional communication may be
related not only to trajectories of self-concept development
but also to long-term cognitive and socio-emotional adaptive
outcomes.
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