An exploration of meta-emotion and communicative behavior among parents and adolescents during family therapy.

摘要

This dissertation forwards a conceptualization of Meta-Emotion Behavior during the family therapy sessions of adolescent males enrolled in a residential treatment center. Inferences drawn and described in Chapters IV, V and VI were grounded in the participants' communicative behaviors. Fifteen residents and their families were recruited from across four phases of therapeutic intervention. Each family allowed for the audio recording of one session. The resulting transcriptions from each session were subjected to quantitative content analyses and iterative qualitative analyses akin to a Grounded Theoretical approach. The combination of qualitative and quantitative data sets allowed for tracking the range and density of emotion terms and prototypical emotion categories as well as the description of the structural components of differing Meta-Emotion Behavior types. Participants used a wide range of emotion terms (208) to express or discuss an emotional experience. These terms were condensed through content analyses into emotion prototype categories. The categorization of grounded emotion terms allowed for the comparison of participant responses to similar emotion expressions or discussions during the course of their therapy sessions. Consistent with existing literature, responses to emotion could be described as "coaching" or "dismissing." Importantly, the results indicate that coaching type responses include demonstrations of awareness, acceptance, listening and, qualified advice giving. Dismissive responses were characterized by the absence of one or more of these coaching components. The data suggest that parents and therapists were more likely to offer coaching than dismissing Meta-Emotion Behaviors and that the proportion of coaching and dismissing behaviors did not vary at each stage of intervention. Evidence suggests however that resident Meta-Emotion Behavior was different according to stage of intervention indicating a shift from dismissive to coaching types of responses. Meta-Emotion Behavior emerged as emotion specific among these participants, representing a potentially important conceptual shift in the study of Emotion Regulation Theory. Participant enactments of Meta-Emotion Behavior indicated that coaching often included confrontation, asking questions, and skill focused advice sometimes offered implicitly. Extensions to Emotion Regulation Theory, practical contributions, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed in Chapter VI.