NCJ Number
177907
Journal
Journal of Emotional Abuse Volume: 1 Issue: 3 Dated: 1999 Pages: 39-64
Date Published
1999
Length
26 pages
Annotation
This study explored the associations between exposure to domestic violence and children's ability to identify and express emotions.
Abstract
A total of 120 children, 60 from families whose mothers had experienced violence in the last year, participated in a story- telling task in which they were shown pictures and asked to describe what each character was feeling. Responses were coded for positive emotions, negative emotions, affiliative emotions, non-affiliative emotions, and the level of sophistication of emotions used in the stories. Generally, subjects attributed more emotions to child characters in their stories than to adult figures. Subjects expressed negative emotions more often than positive emotions in their stories, and they expressed more non-affiliative than affiliative emotions. Although age and gender did not affect the overall quantity of emotion-words that appeared in children's stories, these variables did relate to the types of emotions expressed. One initial hypothesis of the study stated that the experience of family violence would influence children's expression of positive versus negative emotions in their stories. The findings failed to confirm this theory, with analyses of variance showing no significant differences in the expression of positive and negative emotion by children from violent compared to nonviolent families. One possible explanation may be that the overall sample of children expressed so much more negative than positive emotion in their stories that differences due to violence experience were obscured. Also, it may be that children who are exposed to violence do not express any more negative emotions than do other children due in part to their tendency to focus their emotional expressions on objects other than family members. A third explanation is that children from violent families are resilient and do recognize and experience happiness and other positive emotions. The strengths and limitations of the research as well as directions for future research are discussed. 4 tables and 42 references