Is it too much for me? General self-efficacy and emotional reactions to infant’s cry

ABSTRACT

Objectives: In the three experimental conditions we examined the role of the exposure to recorded infant’s cry (at high and at lower frequency) or laughter and the level of participants’ general self-efficacy on emotional reactions to the infant’s cry.

Background: Infant’s cry can trigger empathic, sensitive responses or elicit frustration and anxiety of the caregiver. General caregiver’s self-efficacy serves as a predictor of more sensitive reactions to distress cues of a child.

Method: An experimental study with three conditions – exposure to infant cry at high frequency, infant cry at lower frequency or infant laughter, was conducted on the sample of 192 childless undergraduates. Exposure to the selected stimulus was preceded by the General Self-Efficacy Scale and followed by the My Emotions Scale for the assessment of participants’ emotional reactions to the presented infant crying or laughter.

Results: Participants with high self-efficacy exposed to the child’s cry at high frequency presented the highest level of child-oriented emotional reactions and lower level of self-oriented reactions as compared to participants with low self-efficacy.

Conclusion: Results suggest that general self-efficacy can serve as a supportive factor in sensitive responding to the high-frequency cry. Improving caregivers’ self-efficacy can reduce the risk of insensitive, disturbed parenthood.

KEYWORDS:

• Child’s cry
• general self- efficacy
• emotional response

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.