| Research Abstract |
The purpose of this study was to investigate intergenerational transmission of emotional expressiveness, and the effects of grandparents on family emotional expressiveness.
Two experiments were conducted. In the experiment 1, the relationship 23 mothers' expressiveness assessed using the Family Expressive Questionnaire (FEQ ; Halberstadt, 1986) and their preschool-age children's emotional expression during free play at the kindergarten was investigated. The results indicated that the influence of maternal expressiveness tended to transmit to next generation, when only the negative expression was high.
In the experiment 2, Emotional Expressiveness in the Family Scale (EEFS) was developed, which measured emotional experience, expressiveness, inhibition in the family. Ninety students were filled out the questionnaire, and their family structures in typical, ideal, conflict situations were assessed by Family System Test (FAST ; Gehring, 1993). The EEFS scores and family structures were compared between subjects who live in nuclear families and three generational families. For the EEFS, the students who lived in three generational families inhibited negative emotions than the students who lived in nuclear families, such as disappointment, distress, guilty, hostility, fear, hatred, disgust, contempt, and they expressed positive emotions (happiness, love) among family members. For the FAST, the results showed that distributions of classified types of structures were different between the nuclear families and the three-generational families in the typical situation. The percentage of balanced, unbalanced, and labile-balanced structure was almost the same for nuclear family, whereas the labile-balanced structure was more than a half among the three-generational families. The results indicated that three-generational families may build good-enough relationship among family members by means of inhibition of negative emotions and expression of positive emotions.
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