Exploring the Interaction of Parental Attachment and Personality Development on Children’s Emotion Regulation: Examining Internal and External Behaviors as Rated by Parents

• Main Author: Bosley, Chastity R. Easley
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-2023
• Subjects: Personality psychology; Psychology
• ISBN: 9798377629429

Parents provide an essential framework for how a child understands the functionality of emotions and emotional expressiveness. Research suggests that emotion regulation has an interaction with the parent-child relationship. More research is needed to clarify to what extent each of these components contributes to the outcome of the child's internal and external behavior. Emotion regulation is contingent on a combination of attachment, parenting, and personality. Research has examined personality, attachment, and emotional regulation; however, there is little current research combining all three of these areas. In a quasi-experimental design, the current study integrates three concepts (personality, adult attachment, and emotion regulation) to examine the relationships with children’s emotion regulation strategy. The study utilized a survey to measure the relation between the personality structure, the adult attachment style, externalizing behaviors, and emotion regulation strategies (Cognitive Reappraisal, Expressive Suppression) on children. A set of five self-administered measures were completed by 163 caregivers aged between 18 and 79. The findings indicate that Extraversion and Agreeableness play a role in predicting Cognitive Reappraisal. Extraversion was demonstrated to be a negative predictor of Expressive Suppression. There was a small relationship between Agreeableness and adult Secure Attachment. One of the study's limitations included reliance on self-reports from adults measuring their children's emotion regulation strategies. Understanding how these areas interact enables clinicians to better understand a child's emotional functioning and adjust expectations for their capacity to implement particular interventions effectively.