oLT11: Measuring the emotion socialization process during Chinese parent-child interactions: Cultural considerations for observational research
The socialization of emotion is a multifaceted process that plays a central role in children’s socioemotional development and unfolds during parent-child interactions. We focus on two key modes: parental emotional expressiveness as modeling and co-regulation of children’s emotions as direct responses, both involving verbal and nonverbal processes. Meanwhile, as a cultural process, emotion socialization must be examined under a decolonial framework and beyond conceptualizations grounded in WEIRD contexts. Drawing from our ongoing work coding parent-child interactions on emotion-inducing tasks in 63 rural Chinese families, this lightning talk reflects how we adapted an existing coding scheme to this cultural setting to measure parental emotion expression and co-regulation that are culturally sensitive and salient. Adaptations include clarifying criteria for interpreting emotional intensity when expressions were subtle, and refining distinctions among co-regulation, emotion dismissing, and task-focused encouragement to better capture culturally normative guidance styles.