Emotion Dynamic During Sad Events: The Relation Among Attachment Security, Loneliness and Sadness-Related Emotional...

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Child Psychology
• Emotional Science

Background:

• Current models view sadness as functional but overlook varied child emotional responses.
• Research often fails to address the heterogeneity of children's co-occurring emotions during sad events.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate heterogeneity in children's emotional responses to sad events using a person-centered approach.
• To identify distinct configurations of sadness, anger, fear, and confusion in middle childhood.
• To explore if parental attachment security and loneliness predict membership in identified emotional profiles.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a person-centered approach based on the core affect framework.
• Employed Latent Profile Analysis to identify distinct emotional response patterns.
• Included 174 children aged 7-11 years, examining their emotional responses and parental attachment/loneliness.

Main Results:

• Identified four distinct emotional profiles: Sadness-Focused Response, Anxious Sadness, Emotional Overwhelming, and Externalized Sadness.
• The Sadness-Focused profile reported higher loneliness compared to the Emotional Overwhelming profile.
• Children in the Externalized Sadness profile exhibited lower maternal and paternal attachment security compared to other profiles.

Conclusions:

• Sad events trigger qualitatively different emotional configurations in children, challenging uniform emotionality assumptions.
• Recognizing distinct emotional response patterns is crucial for developing tailored assessment and intervention strategies.
• Parental attachment security and loneliness may play a role in shaping children's diverse emotional responses to sadness.