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No hard feelings: maternal emotion socialization and callous–unemotional traits in children

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Abstract

Parents’ identification and discussion of their own and their children’s emotions are important emotion socialization behaviors (ESBs) that may mitigate child conduct problems (CPs). However, if parents perceive their child to be relatively unemotional, which may be the case for children with conduct problems and high callous–unemotional traits (CP + CU), these parents may be limited in their capacity to use ESBs effectively. This study tested these questions by looking at ESBs in mothers (N = 145) of children aged 2–8 years with CP + CU (n = 24), CPs and low CU traits (CP–CU; n = 94) and a non-clinical community sample (n = 27). After watching an emotional movie excerpt, mothers were asked to (1) provide ratings of their child’s emotional experience and then (2) engage in a debriefing task with their child about the content. Children’s expressed emotion during the excerpt and transcriptions of the debriefing task were coded by masked raters. Unexpectedly, mothers’ perceptions of their children’s emotion did not vary by group. Emotional ratings provided by mothers of children in the CP + CU group most closely aligned with ratings from independent observers. ESBs did not differ by group in the debriefing task. Mothers of children with CP + CU traits were shown in this study to be reliable reporters of their children’s expressed emotion and showed similar rates of parental ESBs as mothers of children in the other groups. Results are discussed in reference to various models of parenting and CU traits that might account for these unexpected findings.

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Data availability

Data files are available on request from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to all the families who participated in this study. We also wish to thank Raneesha De Silva, Amy McNeilage and Samantha Jones for assistance with coding and data entry, and Caroline Moul for assistance recruiting the community sample. This work was conducted at the Child Behaviour Research Clinic within the Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney.

Funding

This study was funded in part by NHMRC Project Grant 2017-2021 APP1123072 to the last-named author.

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  1. School of Psychology, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Jaimie C. Northam, Carri A. Fisher, Charlotte Burman, David J. Hawes & Mark R. Dadds

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  1. Jaimie C. Northam
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  2. Carri A. Fisher
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  3. Charlotte Burman
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Correspondence to Jaimie C. Northam.

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Written informed consent was obtained from the parents, and assent from the children.

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Northam, J.C., Fisher, C.A., Burman, C. et al. No hard feelings: maternal emotion socialization and callous–unemotional traits in children. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 31, 1983–1993 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-021-01835-1

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