RESEARCH INTERESTS

Affective Social Competence

One challenge to the study of children’s socio-emotional development has been to synthesize the myriad competencies involved in children’s wellbeing. Susanne Denham, Julie Dunsmore, and I (2001) created a transactional model centered around the many skills and processes involved in “affective social competence” (ASC) into one coherent, testable whole. In brief, the ASC model proposes that children develop emotional skills in three broad domains: sending (“the efficacious communication of one’s own affect”), receiving (“the successful interpretation and response to others’ affective communications”), and experiencing (“the awareness, acceptance, and management of one’s own affect”; p. 80). Linda Camras and I discussed the current work emerging from this model and new directions in a review of the literature (Camras & Halberstadt, 2017). Our work has been highly influenced by this conceptualization of affective social competence.

One central competence for children’s interpersonal and academic success is emotion understanding, and we continue to build capacity in this research domain for the field as a whole. With a NSF-funded grant, we explored associations between multiple facets of emotion understanding (Castro, Halberstadt, & Garrett-Peters, 2016), and then assessed direct and mediated contributions to children’s emotion understanding and emotion regulation made via mothers’ beliefs about emotions, and emotion socialization behavior (Garrett-Peters, Castro, Halberstadt, 2017); MacCormack, Castro, Halberstadt, Rogers, & Garrett-Peters, 2019; Rogers, Halberstadt, Castro, & Garrett-Peters, 2016). Most recently, thanks to funding from the WT Grant Foundation, we developed the PerCEIVED task (Halberstadt, Cooke, Hagan, & Liu, 2021), which allows for a wide variety of questions to be addressed regarding adults’ and children’s emotion recognition (both accuracy and misperceptions). We are very happy to share our measures and have already begun to do so with researchers at various institutions. Please do ask!

Emotion Socialization Processes: Parents, Schools, Culture

Parents’ beliefs about children’s emotions are important mechanisms that inform parents’ socialization behaviors (including expressiveness, reactions to children’s emotions, and scaffolding of competencies); together these impact children’s socio-emotional competence. Our work has tested many propositions regarding parental beliefs and their associations with children’s behavior. Specifically, we have explored the ways in which parents’ beliefs and behaviors directly or indirectly relate to children’s affective social competencies, including understanding others’ emotions, emotion self-regulatory strategies and coping, and successful interpersonal relationships (e.g., Castro, Halberstadt, Lozada, & Craig, 2015; Dunsmore, Her, Halberstadt, & Rivera, 2009; Halberstadt, Thompson, Parker, & Dunsmore, 2008; Rogers, Halberstadt, Castro, MacCormack, & Garrett-Peters, 2015; Stelter & Halberstadt, 2011). To foster work in this field, we developed the Parents’ Beliefs about Children’s Emotions (PBACE) Questionnaire, which is invariant for three American ethnicities and both fathers and mothers (Halberstadt, Dunsmore, et al., 2013), and is now available in a number of languages, with specific psychometric work among Mapuche Chilean and non-Mapuche Chilean families and teachers (Riquelme, Miranda-Zapata, & Halberstadt, 2019).

Parental beliefs and behaviors are culturally embedded, as we noted in our early opening of this field (Dunsmore & Halberstadt, 1997). Interwoven throughout our studies are issues related to gender, race, and culture (e.g., Brown, Craig, & Halberstadt, 2015). Interest in these themes is deep and long-lasting, with theoretical conceptualization of the frames generally used when considering culture and the ways in which parents socialize the expression, experience, and understanding of emotion (Halberstadt & Lozada, 2011), and strategic explorations of theoretically-derived questions in multiple cultures, with Russian, Chinese immigrant, and Mapuche and non-Mapuche Chilean families and teachers (e.g., Chentsova, Leontyeva, Halberstadt, & Adams, 2021; Halberstadt, Oertwig, & Riquelme, 2020; Oertwig, Riquelme, & Halberstadt, 2019). We welcome collaborations in exploring these and other questions related to socialization of emotion.

Racism is Everywhere

Our increasing awareness of educational inequity over a dozen years ago led to pilot work and eventual funding by the WT Grant Foundation to explore explicit and implicit racism in the teacher workforce. We began with the realm of emotion as a central feature of children’s and teachers’ lives in school, thinking if we could specify some of the pathways by which systemic racism becomes embedded in individual perceptions, we could help educators to be aware of specific biases that impact youth. This work has led to three research domains. First, we demonstrate the pervasive phenomenon of racialized anger bias (Cooke & Halberstadt, 2021; Halberstadt, Castro, Chu, Lozada, & Sims, 2018; Halberstadt, Cooke, Garner, Hughes, Oertwig, & Halberstadt, 2021) and continue our work to better understand the phenomenon both qualitatively and quantitatively -- who is most prone to the bias. upon whom is it most often perpetuated, and what are the consequences (e.g., Sherick, Sun, Legette, & Halberstadt, under review; Legette, Harris, Halberstadt, & Armstrong, under review). To consider origins, with Kamilah Legette, we explore the beliefs that teachers have about the sources of racism and how those beliefs infiltrate teachers’ perceptions of and disciplinary responses toward White and Black youth (Legette, Halberstadt, & Majors, 2021; Legette, Supple, & Halberstadt, under review). Third, we provide theoretical underpinnings for White socialization behavior (Halberstadt, Hagan, & Lozada, 2021), and examine White parents’ various color-conscious, color-silent, and discussion-hesitant socialization practices (Hagan, Halberstadt, Cooke, Garner, & Legette, under review). In these ways, we are poised to respond to pressing social justice questions that impact the well-being of children.

Specific Emotions: Our Favorites!

Honestly, we like them all: We have published a number of studies on anger in the family (e.g., Halberstadt, Beale, Meade, Parker, & Thompson, 2014) as well as racialized anger bias discussed above, socialization of pride (Hagan, Leary, and Halberstadt, 2021), shifting fear to respect (e.g., Oertwig, Riquelme, & Halberstadt, 2019), cultural and family socialization of sadness (Chentsova, Leontyeva, Halberstadt, & Adams, in press), and socialization of gratitude (e.g., Hussong, Coffman, & Halberstadt, in press). We are open to all emotions! Our newest work focuses on respect, which we are exploring in cross-laboratory and cross-cultural initiatives.

COVID-19 AND THE EMOTIONALITY OF RESPECT AND DISRESPECT EXPERIENCES

Xi Liu, Elizabeth Flatt, Hannah Green, Grace Edwardsen, and Amy Halberstadt