Investigating the role of parents' character strengths in explaining emotional socialization concerning the mediation role of emotion regulation

Abstract                                                   The characteristics and traits of parents play an important role in the emotional socialization of their children, so the purpose of this research was to investigate the role of parents' character strengths in explaining the emotional socialization styles concerning the mediator role of emotion regulation. The research method is a descriptive correlation. The statistical population was the parents of primary school students in Yazd in the academic year ‎2020-2021. The sample size was 300 people and they were selected by the multi-stage cluster sampling method, and finally, 286 people completed the questionnaires. Research measurements included the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES), Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), and Brief Strength Test (BST). SPSS23 and PLS-SEM3 software was used for data analysis. The results showed that parents' character strengths do not explain supportive CCNE (β=0.18, p=0.16), but negatively explain non-supportive CCNE (β=-0.57, p=0.001). character strengths are a positive explainer of emotion regulation (β=0.55, p=0.001). The findings showed that emotion regulation does not explain supportive CCNE (β = -0.09, p = 0.59) and non-supportive CCNE (β = -0.07, p = 0.73). The indirect effects of parents' character strengths on supportive and non-supportive CCNE due to the mediating role of emotional regulation are not significant. In general, it can be said that the character strengths that constitute human virtues can lead to an increase in emotional regulation in parents and, on the other hand, lead to a decrease in non-supportive CCNE in parents.