Wesley Sanders

Research Interests

My interests focus on emotion regulation and developmental psychopathology. More specifically, my research looks at emotion dysregulation as mediated by parental socialization and what effect this has on behavioral outcomes in the child. In early childhood, children are just beginning to take on the burden of regulating their own emotions; a task largely relegated to the parents in the early formative years. As this change over begins, many social factors can influence the child while he or she learns when and how to modify emotional responses. Parents obviously play an enormous role in the development of the child, but what I find of particular interest are the differences between parent genders. Given that little research has looked at paternal influence in emotional development, my research focuses on the socializing factors from both parents and the unique contributions of the father.

Current Studies

My current research focuses on emotion regulation in early childhood as affected by parental socialization. Children and parents complete several questionnaires designed to measure emotion regulation in the child as well as parental coping with their child's negative emotions. In addition, parents complete emotion discussion tasks separately with their child, allowing us to observe different methods the parents employ when dealing with their child's emotions. These differences will help highlight unique approaches to emotion discussion as a function of parent gender.