Family emotional expressiveness and family structure

Abstract

The present paper scrutinizes the relationship between family emotional expressiveness (i.e., the tendency to express dominant and/or submissive positive and negative emotions) and components of family structure as proposed in Olson's Circumplex model (i.e., cohesion and flexibility, family communication, and satisfaction) in families with adolescents. The study was conducted on a sample of 514 Slovenian adolescents, who filled out two questionnaires: the Slovenian version of Family Emotional Expressiveness - FEQ and FACES IV. The results revealed that all four basic dimensions of family functioning were significantly associated with higher/more frequent expressions of positive submissive emotions, as well as with lower/less frequent expressions of negative dominant emotions. Moreover, expressions of negative submissive emotions explained a small, but significant amount of variance in three out of four family functioning variables (satisfaction, flexibility, and communication). The importance of particular aspects of emotional expressiveness for family cohesion, flexibility, communication, and satisfaction is discussed, and the relevance of present findings for family counselling is outlined.