(PS7-73) Teaching Adolescents Friend Emotion Socialization Skills: Results of a Pilot Study

Abstract Text: Emotion socialization (ES) is the process through which adolescents learn to identify and regulate their emotions consistent with cultural display rules (Eisenberg et al., 2020). Although parents are initially the primary ES agents, close friends play a progressively more important role in ES during adolescence (Hale et al., 2023). High-quality friendships play a key role in adolescent development and are associated with a myriad of benefits (Güroğlu, 2020). Despite their developmental significance, few interventions have aimed to improve adolescent ES practices (Manchanda et al., 2023). The present study examines the effects of a modified parental Tuning into Teens program (TINT; Kehoe et al., 2013) to teach adolescents supportive ES skills. The adapted program was delivered in-person to a community sample of middle-school-age youth through six, two-hour sessions, in which two sessions focused on teaching adolescents how to respond supportively to their friend’s worry, sadness, and anger.
Participants were 34 adolescents (22 girls, M = 11.90 years, 76.5% White, middle-class) who completed the TINT program and answered questionnaires evaluating friend emotion socialization (YYF, Klimes-Dougan et al., 2014) and friendship quality (FQQ; Parker & Asher, 1993) at three time-points (weeks 1, 6, 10). Data collection is continuing with the expectation of adding 20 participants. Repeated-measures ANOVAs were conducted to examine changes in friendship variables over time. Regarding ES, there was a large effect size for friend support of worry, F(2, 27) = 2.62, p = .09, ηp2 = .17, such that support increased from T1 to T3 (p = .03). The same pattern emerged for sadness support, F(2, 27) = 2.29, p = .12, ηp2 = .15, with a significant increase from T1 to T3 (p = .04). There were no significant effects for anger support. For friends’ neglect of worry, there was a large effect size, F(2, 27) = 2.79, p = .08, ηp2 = .18, with a significant decrease from T2 to T3 (p = .03). There were no significant effects for sadness or anger neglect. There was a large effect size for sadness relational aggression, F(1.31, 35.28) = 4.58, p = .03, ηp2 = .15, with a decrease from T1 to T2 (p = .03) and from T1 to T3 (p = .04). There were no significant effects for anger or worry relational aggression. TRegarding friendship quality, there was a significant effect for overall quality, F(2, 29) = 5.39, p = .01, ηp2 = .27, such that it significantly increased from T1 to T3 (p = .002). There were significant effects for the subscales of conflict resolution, F(2, 29) = 2.55, p = .09, ηp2 = .09, and companionship, F(2, 29) = 6.79, p = .004, ηp2 = .32 with both increasing from T1 to T3.
The findings suggest that the modified TINT program effectively improves young adolescents’ close friendships through increased friendship quality. Additionally, TINT promotes adaptive friend ES practices by increasing adolescents’ validation of their close friends’ worry and sadness as well as decreasing ignoring of friends’ worry and relational aggression in response to sadness. These findings have important implications for adolescent well-being, as adolescents with high-quality friendships report greater life satisfaction, happiness, and self-esteem, along with lower levels of loneliness (Alsarrani et al., 2022).