Distinguished Undergraduate Mentoring Award 2017

Cross-Cultural and Developmental Psychology

PSY 300 - Research Methods in Psychology

PSY 400 - Advanced Research in Psychology

PSY 355 - Psychology and Culture

PSY 499 - Independent Study & Research

My research focuses on socio-emotional development within the cultural context. Socialization practices differ over cultures and shape children's development from birth. Child-rearing behavior and reactions of parents are guided by subjective beliefs that parents have about education and development in general. One actual main interest is to study such beliefs (ethnotheories) in regard to parents' perception of competence and more specifically, their expectation about children's emotion expression and experience.

The project "Emotion Socialization in Cultural Perspective" aims to analyze effects of cultural variations of emotion socialization on children’s development of emotions by comparing Turkish, Romanian, Israeli, Indian, and American families. We test cultural variations in mothers’ emotion regulation strategies and toddlers' emotion expression and regulation. We used observation methods, semi-structured interview, and questionnaires. The study was carried out in collaboration with Dr. Feyza Corapci (Bogazici University, Istanbul), Dr. Oana Benga (Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj), Dr. Jenny Kurman (University of Haifa), and Dr. Shagufa Kapadia (Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda). Currently, we analyze moment-to-moment dynamics of how parents respond to and help toddlers in emotionally challenging situation. Such microgenetic analyses may provide insight how to tailor parenting interventions to specific parent-toddler interactions involving emotion regulation.

Editor of Online Readings of  Psychology and Culture

Chair of Communication and Publication Committee (CPC) of IACCP (2018 to 2022)

Corapci, F. & Friedlmeier, W. (2019). Proactive parenting with toddlers in two contexts: A cross-cultural comparison of the US and Turkey. Manuscript in preparation.

Kathuria, T., Kapadia, S., & Friedlmeier, W. (2022). Links between maternal emotion socialization goals and practices in an urban Indian context. In M. Klicperova-Baker & W. Friedlmeier (Eds.) (2022), Xenophobia vs. patriotism: Where is my home? Proceedings from the 25th Congress of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, 10. https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/iaccp_papers/297/

Benga, O., Susa-Erdogan, G., Friedlmeier, W., Corapci, F., & Ramonti, M. (2019). Maternal self-construal, maternal socialization of emotions and child emotion regulation in a sample of Romanian mother-toddler dyads. Frontiers, 7, 1-27. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02680

Friedlmeier, W., Corapci, F., Susa-Erdogan, G., Benga, O., & Kurman, J. (2019). Cultural variations of maternal emotion regulation of toddler’s emotions in a delay of gratification context. Culture and Brain, 7, 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40167-018-0076-0

Lubiewska, K., Albert, I., Trommsdorff, G., & Friedlmeier, W. (2018). Relations between parenting and adolescent’s attachment in families differing in solidarity patterns. Social Development. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/sode.12297

Sanders, V. R., Friedlmeier, W., & Sanchez Gonzalez, M. L. (2018). Emotion norms in media: Acculturation in Hispanic-American children's storybooks compared to heritage and mainstream culture. Sage Open, 8. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244018788607

Corapci, F., Friedlmeier, W., Benga, O., Strauss, C., Pitica, I. & Susa, G. (2017). Cultural socialization of toddlers in emotionally-charged situations. Social Development. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/sode.12272 

Friedlmeier, W., Corapci, F., & Benga, O. (2014). Cultural perspective on emotional development in early childhood. In L. Jensen (Ed.), Oxford handbook of culture and development (pp. 127-148). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199948550.013.9