Parental emotion socialization of sadness in black adolescents

This project followed a two-study design. It intended to define parental emotion socialization (PES) within a sample of older Black adolescents and to examine the influence of PES on adolescents' attitudes toward the expression of sadness (the primary emotion associated with depression). Study 1 consisted of a series of focus groups. Participants were Black college students with an average age of 19. Results from study 1 informed the development of measures to assess facilitative and non-facilitative PES of sadness and general and race-based attitudes towards the expression of sadness. Study 2 tested the five proposed hypotheses intended to examine the frequency of facilitative PES versus non-facilitative PES of sadness; context-based PES; PES across emotions (sadness, anger, and fear); direct effects of PES on attitudes; and gender differences in PES and attitudes. Participants included 87 Black high school students with a mean age of 16. Results indicated greater facilitative PES than non-facilitative PES of sadness and a significant relationship between PES and attitudes towards sadness. Results further indicated that Black parents used emotion-specific PES strategies though PES did not differ across contexts. There also were no gender differences in PES or attitudes. Implications of these findings and future directions for research are discussed