I wish to understand what I am reading, the study states that maternal characteristics (depression) influence negative emotionality but not positive, does this mean they are innate?
Hi Merisa,
I assume that you're talking about negative/positive emotionality in the offspring. Coming back to your question, it appears that the study you're talking about found an association between mother's level of depression and the child's level of negative emotionality (e.g., manifestations of fear or frustration), but not the child's level of positive emotionality (e.g., smiling). One would generally expect that as long as high maternal depression predicts high child negative emotionality, it should also predict (usually, but certainly not all the time) low child positive emotionality.
Is this helpful?
Florin
Very Helpful Florin, thank you. I shall get to the references everyone supplied and thank you for them, much appreciated. Thank you so much for providing me avenues to explore.
Hi, Merisa. It is important to remember that temperament itself develops! Children's traits change over time. There are no innate traits. Rather, there are genetic and environmental influences on children's traits at birth and all through the life course. That study may have simply not identified important environmental influences on positive emotionality. I am attaching several review papers on this topic that I have written in the last few years to help with this issue.
As Rebecca Shiner indicated, temperament does develop, and this occurs through interactions between a child's genetic endowment and environmental influences. Thus, children are prone to certain temperamental traits, such as negative emotionality which means a child is more inclined to be upset by a small setback or overly disappointed with a change of plans. However, an individual's ability to cope with and regulate their emotions influences negative emotionality - not just its expression but an individual's natural reaction.
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