The approach taken in this talk will emphasize theory and research synthesis. More specifically, those factors that help (or hinder) children to acquire the skills of emotional competence will be examined. These skills include (a) awareness of one’s own affect, (b) understanding others’ emotional experience, (c) having a lexicon of emotion, (d) capacity for empathy and sympathy, (e) differentiation of emotional expression from internal emotional experience, (f) ability to regulate emotion and cope appropriately, (g) awareness that relationships are in large part defined by how emotion is communicated, and lastly (h) capacity for emotional self-efficacy, which is informed by one’s moral sense as well as one’s beliefs about desirable emotional "balance."
The development of emotional competence appears to be mediated by children’s emotion regulation style (as rated by caregivers) in conjunction with parenting variables. In turn, culture and societal values influence parenting beliefs about emotion, and thus bi-directional effects play an important role in children’s emotional development.
Children also influence their own trajectory of emotional development through their unique emotion regulatory disposition, but that trajectory is also influenced by the family (e.g., through parental acceptance of the child’s emotional experience), by the school and peer network, and by the culture in terms of how meaning and value are attributed to different kinds of emotional experience. Discussion is welcome!
Dr. Carolyn Saarni received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, specializing in developmental psychology. Since 1980 she has been a Professor in the Graduate Department of Counseling at Sonoma State University in California where she trains prospective marriage and family therapists and school counselors.
Professor Saarni's research has focused on children’s emotional development. Her co-edited volumes include Lying and Deception in Everyday Life (with Dr. Michael Lewis), The Socialization of Emotion (also with Dr. Michael Lewis), and Children's Understanding of Emotion (with Dr. Paul Harris). She is also a co-author of a chapter that focuses on emotional development with Drs. Campos, Camras, and Witherington in the forthcoming edition of the Handbook of Child Psychology.
Dr. Saarni has also written a book, The Development of Emotional Competence, (Guilford Press), whose thesis is that the skills of emotional competence are contextualized by culture, including a given society's moral values, beliefs about emotion, and assumptions about the nature of the relationship between the individual and the larger society.