Overview of Findings
This page describes overarching themes and patterns that were present in the data.
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Click on a topic below to navigate to related findings.
Here are the four coping families listed in order from most to least prevalent throughout the selected literature:
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Active
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Support-seeking
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Avoidant
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Distraction
It is exciting to see that active coping strategies were the most prevalent throughout the children’s books. When used properly, active coping strategies are generally a very healthy and effective approach to overcoming a stressor.
Direct problem solving and positive cognitive restructuring were the two most prevalent active strategies. This is an exciting finding when connected with psychological research. In a study that looked at different coping strategies and their relationship with prosocial behavior, direct problem solving and positive cognitive restructuring had the strongest correlation with prosocial behavior (5). It’s wonderful to find that some of the most popular strategies portrayed throughout the books can encourage healthy social behavior.
Direct problem solving is a great coping strategy when dealing with controllable stressors. It allows children to feel a sense of control in their problem solving, which can help them in the coping process (33). Clearly, these portrayals of direct problem solving can be great models for young readers.
Positive cognitive restructuring is especially helpful when dealing with uncontrollable stressors. If we can’t change the stressor itself, we can change the way we think about the stressor. Younger readers may not yet have the cognitive abilities necessary to use this cognitive coping method. On the other hand, older readers may feel more comfortable using positive cognitive restructuring. It can be encouraging for them to see their favorite characters successfully coping with their stressors through cognitive means, a skill they are likely still developing.
Support seeking was the second most prevalent throughout the books. This is another exciting finding, as numerous studies have found that support seeking, where for emotion- or problem-focused, is a useful coping strategy for school-aged children.
Overall, there was a fairly even split between adults and friends being the providers of social support.
However, this was not the case when separating problem-focused and emotion-focused social support. Problem-focused support seeking was portrayed slightly more than emotion-focused coping. When problem-focused support was needed, a friend was the support-giver more often than an adult. But, when emotion-focused support was needed, an adult was the support-giver more often than a friend.
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This is an exciting finding because it is consistent with patterns found in kids’ development.
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As kids grow older, peers become an increasingly important part of their lives and support systems (9, 37). Asking a friend for help can be a great way to strengthen these friendships. When characters ask their friends and peers for help when solving a problem, it provides a healthy model for kids as they begin to develop their own social relationships.
However, kids often deal with stressors that are uncontrollable and too complex for a friend to handle. Research suggests that when seeking support for uncontrollable stressors, kids tend to turn to adults. This is true even for older kids (7-8 years old) who generally prefer peer support over adult support (37). This is what we see in the children’s books, too! When seeking emotion focused support, a way to cope with uncontrollable stressors, the book characters also favored adults over kids as the providers of this support.
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This pattern shows just how nuanced coping strategies and their portrayals can get. With a healthy balance of support provided by both friends and adults, young readers have a variety of great models of how to seek out social support and who might be a good source of that support.
Avoidance and Distraction Strategies
Avoidant actions was the most prevalent coping strategy from the avoidance and distraction families, with very few portrayals of cognitive avoidance, distracting actions, and distracting thoughts. Interestingly, in all but one portrayal*, when an avoidance or distraction strategy was used, it was followed by an active strategy. This is an interesting pattern for a few reasons.
First, it models that sometimes we have to try more than once to overcome a stressor. As kids grow older, they will be exposed to more unfamiliar stressors. Their coping attempts may not be successful the first time, making this an especially important lesson.
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Second, in most of the portrayals, the characters used avoidance or distraction so that they wouldn’t have to directly cope with their stressor. Having active coping strategies follow these failed efforts models the importance of dealing with problems directly.
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Finally, this theme is consistent with where many readers are developmentally. While avoidance and distraction are common coping strategies in early childhood, once a child reaches middle childhood (roughly age 5-6), the usage of these strategies starts to decline (15). When the books display active coping strategies immediately following attempts at avoidance and distraction, they are modeling healthy alternatives that may be more appealing to kids as they begin to move away from avoidance and distraction.
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*In the portrayal where avoidance was not followed by an active strategy, avoidance was used in a healthy, effective way.
Are there more portrayals of cognitive or behavioral strategies?
Behavioral strategies were used much more frequently than cognitive strategies. In fact, there were almost 3x as many behavioral than cognitive strategies throughout the books. This makes sense when looking at the age of the intended audience, which for many of the books was 4-8. Many younger readers will not have yet developed the cognitive abilities needed to engage in some of the more complex cognitive coping strategies.
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Since older readers may be ready to start trying out some more cognitive coping strategies, the behavioral strategies they will see throughout these books will likely be very comfortable and familiar to them. The various portrayals of cognitive coping strategies can be especially helpful for these older kids as they begin to use these techniques in their daily lives.
Here are the three emotional regulation (ER) families listed in order from most to least prevalent throughout the selected literature:
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Engagement
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Dysregulation
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Disengagement
Engaging with an emotion is generally a healthy way to regulate it. With engagement as the most portrayed strategy, it is encouraging to know that there are many great models of this healthy behavior.
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Within the family of engagement, emotional support seeking was the most prevalent subcategory, followed by acceptance, talking to someone, and emotion-focused coping. There were a few portrayals of assisted problem solving and cognitive coping, and minimal portrayals of self-directed problem solving.
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In a majority of the portrayals, using an engagement strategy was followed by a positive response. This is important because the response to a strategy can be just as educational as the strategy itself. Most of the portrayals in which engagement did not have a positive effect involved the character failing to receive social support, even after asking for it. This is a very common scenario that kids are likely to experience. Thus, even though it portrays a healthy ER strategy resulting in an unsuccessful outcome, it is not surprising to find this scenario throughout children’s books.
With emotional support seeking, there was a fairly even split between friends and adults serving as the provider of support. However, if a character received emotional support without explicitly asking for it, it was more likely that an adult would be the provider of this unprompted support, not a friend or peer. This can serve as a helpful reminder for young readers that even as their social relationships mature and peers become an increasingly important part of their lives, they can still turn to adults and caregivers for emotional support.
Interestingly, acceptance always resulted in either a positive or neutral outcome**. Accepting the answer of “no” or that something is out of one’s control can be very difficult for some children, especially younger kids who may not yet have the cognitive skills to understand why they must accept something they do not like. The generally positive portrayals of acceptance throughout the books can serve as a great model for dealing with uncontrollable stressors.
**Neutral outcomes include the chapter or book ending without any additional comments on the regulation attempt, etc.
Emotional venting was the most prevalent form of dysregulation, followed closely by rumination. There were a few portrayals of aggressive actions, with no portrayals of self-injurious behavior.
Interestingly, every time dysregulation was used, there was a negative consequence. These consequences ranged from being given punishment, to feeling bad about one’s behavior, to receiving disapproving looks from teachers and parents.
Not only was dysregulation often followed by a negative consequence, it was also often followed by a healthier attempt at regulation. For example, emotional venting was often followed by the character sharing their feelings or talking with someone. Rumination was often followed by a realization that worrying did not do anything to make the situation better; it actually made it worse.
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These examples show why it is so important to not only look at an ER behavior, but the consequences of that behavior. Though these dysregulation attempts themselves were not healthy, they were followed by negative consequences and more successful regulation attempts. Instead of viewing emotional venting, rumination, and aggressive actions as poor models, we can look at them as opportunities to learn and talk about more positive and effective ER strategies.
Behavioral escape was the most prevalent disengagement strategy, followed by ignoring, and only one portrayal of cognitive escape.
Interestingly, every attempt at disengagement was eventually followed by an engagement strategy. This can serve as a very helpful model for kids: when a character uses disengagement, they are modeling that it is okay to take some time to calm down if a feeling is too overwhelming. But, with an engagement strategy always following, kids can see that eventually, they will have to face their feelings in a more direct fashion.
Are there more portrayals of cognitive or behavioral strategies?
Similar to coping, there were more portrayals of behavioral than cognitive strategies. However, the ratio was slightly different; when looking at ER, there were only roughly 2x as many behavioral strategies. This makes sense, as regulating emotions is often much more of an internal process than dealing with some of the external stressors seen in coping.
Final Conclusions
One of the goals of this project was to determine if popular children’s fictional literature model health coping and emotional regulation strategies. Through my analysis, I have found that as a whole, these books do model healthy regulatory abilities.
When characters used an unhealthy or maladaptive coping or regulation strategy, their attempt was almost always unsuccessful and was followed by a negative consequence and/or a healthier approach to coping or regulation.
The books portrayed a wide range of developmentally-appropriate regulatory abilities that have potential to serve as great models for kids as they develop deeper understandings of social-emotional topics. Popular children’s books can help young readers navigate complicated topics by taking abstract stressors and emotions and displaying them in a comfortable way that promotes reader engagement and understanding.