Communicative functions of emotions in sibling relationships

Abstract

Intrapersonal functions ascribed to emotions are varied. Arguments and evidence abound showing that individual differences in emotionality at the behavioral level of analysis, correlates at the cognitive and physiological levels of analysis not only form defining features of manifest pathology but also constitute risk factors to psychopathology. However, interpersonal functions of emotions remain under-examined, although most emotion theorists would agree that emotions carry signal value and must therefore serve communicative functions during social interactions, and despite the central role emotions play in many theoretical frameworks that seek to understand relationships. The only exception to this trend is research on marital interaction. This body work has relied on sequential analytic methods to examine the communicative functions of emotions and have linked those patters to long-term relationship outcomes such as divorce. In the current study, we applied this methodology to the verbal content and nonverbal affective tone of young children's interactions with their siblings at home in a free play context. As a first step, we asked if we could identify lawful communication chains using only children's non-affective verbal behavioral exchanges, amidst apparently random streams of transactions and conversational turns characteristic of young children's play. We then asked whether young children utilized the information in their siblings' nonverbal affective tone over and above the information contained in the verbal-behavioral channel to alter their subsequent responses in free-flowing interactions. Our findings supported the hypothesis that young children do utilize the emotional, affective tone of their siblings' verbal messages and that those emotional expressions play a key role in the regulation of sibling conflict.