Adolescents’ perceptions of maternal response to negative affect predict emotional reactivity during mother–daughter interaction: A multi-modal assessment

Parental socialization of emotion consists of parental behaviors that scaffold child emotional reactivity and regulation. The current study examined whether adolescents’ perceptions of their mothers’ supportive versus non-supportive responses to negative emotions could predict adolescent emotional reactivity. Thirty adolescent girls (M_age = 14.41 [1.55]) reported on how their mothers typically respond to their negative emotions and then completed a laboratory-based mother–adolescent interaction task. A multi-modal assessment of adolescent emotional reactivity during the interaction included adolescents’ skin conductance levels (SCLs) and state anxiety, and mother–daughter interactions were behaviorally coded to assess how often dyads engaged in both negative and positive escalation (i.e., a pattern of negative or positive behavior of one partner being reciprocated by the other). Adolescents who reported that their mothers used more non-supportive responses to their negative emotion tended to exhibit higher SCL and engage in more negative escalation with their mothers during the interaction task. Furthermore, adolescents’ SCL was positively correlated with both their state anxiety levels and negative escalation during the task. Together, these findings suggest that adolescents who perceive their mothers as less supportive of negative emotions are more likely to exhibit greater negative emotionality during parent–adolescent interaction, which may relate to risk for emotional disorders.