Socializing Emotions in Childhood: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Between the Bara in Madagascar and the Minangkabau in Indonesia

Abstract

This article addresses the interdependency between child-rearing goals and values, emotionally arousing child-rearing practices, and the socialization and development of so-called socializing emotions. The latter are assigned a general psychological control function that enables children to adjust their behavior and emotions to the normative prescriptions of their culture. It is assumed that they are inculcated by means of emotionally arousing strategies such as frightening, corporal punishment, mocking, shaming but also praising, encouraging, or cherishing (Quinn, 2005) and that—in line with Vygotsky's genetic law of development—they become internalized so effectively that they can exert their control function already without prior disciplining.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research is supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the Cluster “Languages of Emotion.” ² We thank Jonathan Harrow for translating parts of this article into English, and we are grateful for the thoughtful suggestions from three anonymous reviewers.

Notes

¹The exact frequency distribution of these interaction modes still has to be assessed on the basis of a time-sampled spot observation that has already been conducted.

²The research project “Socialization and Ontogeny of Emotions in Cross-Cultural Comparison” was funded by the DFG within the framework of the interdisciplinary research cluster “Languages of Emotions” located at the Freie Universität Berlin. The project actually compared three different societies. Alongside the two previously mentioned, our colleague Leberecht Funk spent 1 year on a field study of the Tao society on the Taiwanese island of Lan Yu (Orchid Island). Because the data from this study have yet to be analyzed, the present article compares only the Bara and Minangkabau.