Psihološka Obzorja (Mar 2006)
Emotional climate in family: comparison between Slovene and Spanish students
Abstract
The main goal of the study was to examine the nature of emotional climate in families of Slovene and Spanish students. Participants in our research were 20 years old psychology students fromSlovenia (N = 75) and Spain (N = 79). The most frequent structure of family organization was five-member's nuclear type. We hypothesised that emotional climate in families does not differ between nations. The results showed that the Slovene and Spanish students indeed reported of the same quality of emotional climate in their families. Second, participants of both samples estimated their mother as the psychologically most important family member and as a person with whom they most frequently establish emotional connections. On the other hand, students report lack of emotional transmission with their fathers – Slovene students even reported that this connection with their fathers contains above all negative emotions. The important phenomenon which forms family structure was also presented in families of both samples – "the coalition of women". Third, participants also attributed big amount of emotions to figure 'nobody', which indicates that they wanted to illustrate their family as mostly positive and as a group with socially accepted behavior. Even more, a lot of emotions was clasiffied – especially negative emotions by Slovene students – to figure 'me', which could be an indictor of egocentric position of participants in their perception of themselves.
