Adolescent Friend Emotion Socialization: Does It Matter Which Emotion You Feel?

ABSTRACT During adolescence, the increased centrality of friendships results in more opportunities for friends to socialize one another's emotions. However, little is known about the expectations adolescents have about their friend's responses to their emotions, which may provide insights into emotion expression norms within friendships. Adolescent emotion socialization responses (i.e., reward, override, magnify, neglect, and punish) were evaluated for sadness, worry, and anger, with consideration of gender and time effects. Youth ( n = 121; 53.7% girls; M age = 12.64 years; 75.6% White; middle‐class) reported on their expectations of their friend's emotion socialization responses twice, four years apart. To examine differences in emotion socialization responses across emotion type, gender, and time, a 4‐way repeated measures ANOVA was conducted. A significant emotion type X socialization response X time interaction emerged. At Time 1, adolescents expected more friend magnification of worry than sadness and anger. At Time 2, adolescents anticipated more friend reward of sadness than worry and anger, expected more friend magnification of worry and anger than sadness, and perceived more friend punishment for anger than sadness and worry. A significant emotion type X gender interaction indicated that boys expected more responses from friends to expressions of worry than sadness or anger. A significant socialization response X gender interaction indicated that both boys and girls expected reward responses the most, and neglect and punishment the least. Taken together, the type of emotion experienced is important in the development of norms for emotion expression within adolescent close friendships.