That's what I like about you: Peer social status and emotion functioning in boys

Accurate understanding of emotion is pivotal in effective social interaction and communication (Bryant, 1987, Camras et al., 1996, Saarni, 1999). Findings suggest that children's level of emotion understanding are associated with social skills (Nowicki & Duke, 1994), sociometric status (Custrini & Feldman, 1989), higher rates of prosocial behavior (Garner & Miner, 1996), and social competence (Boyatzis & Satyaprasad, 1994, McClanahan, 1996; Nowicki & Mitchell, 1998). Children who exhibit psychopathology and maladaptive behavior demonstrate deficits in emotion recognition and regulation and attenuated peer status (Schultz, 2001; Walker & Leister, 1994). As such, it is important to explore the relationship between social status and emotion and behavioral functioning.;This project examines whether children with differing social status exhibit differences in their emotional functioning (i.e., in emotion skills such as understanding, regulation, and emotionality). Participants included 113 boys (43% African American, 51% European American) recruited from rural, low-income public schools in the Southeastern United States. After peer status was identified via peer nomination sociometrics, children were administered a brief intelligence test (PPVT-III; Dunn and Dunn, 1997), an emotion understanding task (ACES, Schultz & Izard, 1998), and a self-report of functioning and adjustment questionnaire (BASC-SRP; Reynolds & Kamphaus, 1992). Teachers rated children on emotionality (emotion intensity, AIS; Eisenberg et al., 1995), emotion regulation (ERC; Shields & Cichetti, 1997) and behavioral functioning (CBCL-TRF; Achenbach, 1991a). Data were analyzed using correlational analyses, repeated measures analyses of variance, and hierarchical and stepwise regressions. Consistent with hypotheses and previous literature, accepted children demonstrated lower rates of behavior problems (internalizing and externalizing) and better overall functioning as compared to rejected and neglected children. Secondly, children with higher cognitive ability and positive social status displayed better emotion understanding and regulation. Accepted boys demonstrated better performance on emotion understanding and had higher rates of emotion regulation and lesser rates of lability/negativity. Relative to accepted children, rejected and neglected children exhibited increased emotionality with rejected children displaying the highest level of emotionality. Relative to accepted children, children with negative social status displayed decreased rates of emotion regulation. Rejected boys displayed the lowest rates of emotion regulation while neglected boys exhibited less than the accepted group. Contrary to hypotheses, emotionality and emotion regulation did not mediate the effect of emotion understanding in the prediction of social status, child behavior problems (internalizing and externalizing behavior problems), and child adjustment.