The broad goals of this project are to better understand how people cope with emotions (especially vicariously induced emotions such as sympathy and personal distress), the factors related to constructive coping with emotions, and the relation of how one deals with emotions to social competence, prosocial behavior, and popularity. Specifically, the purposes of the proposed research are several: (a) to examine the roles of self-regulation and coping capabilities in vicarious emotional responding and subsequent behavior; (b) to examine the relations of dispositional emotional reactivity and reactivity in a given context to vicarious emotional responding, (c) to explore the interaction of affective reactivity with self-regulation/coping style in relation to people's vicarious responding and coping with their own and others' emotional states; (d) to assess the relations between children's vicarious emotional responding and parental (particularly mother's) sympathy, personal stress, and behavioral reactions to children's emotional states, and their conversation about others' in emotion-ladden contexts. In this research, we will take a multimethod approach, using self-report and behavioral measures, facial and physiological markers of emotion, and naturalistic as well as laboratory studies. Six initial studies are described: (a) two multimethod laboratory studies in which the role of parental (particularly maternal) vicarious emotional responding, behavior in situations involving others' emotions, and emotion-related language in children's vicarious emotional responding is examined, (b) two studies on young children's coping with their own and others' emotion in the school setting, and the relation of such coping with vicarious responding, social competence, popularity, and social behavior; and (c) laboratory studies involving physiological indexes of vicarious emotional responding in which the roles of self-regulation/coping and reactivity in vicarious emotional responding and consequent prosocial behavior are examined in greater detail.
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