Welcome to the Family Emotion Ecology Lab (FEELab, pronounced “feel lab”). Our lab studies how children’s emotions develop within their family environments.
Specifically, we investigate questions like:
- Can getting angry or sad sometimes help children grow?
- How do children use anger constructively to tackle problems that upset them?
- What are the beliefs parents hold about children’s negative emotions?
- How do we support parents in making home a healthy emotional space for their children’s
development?
Our goal is to gain a deeper understanding of children’s emotional growth within families. We hope our research will provide insights to help parents and educators nurture children’s emotional skills. Please explore our site to learn more about our research and people.
Dr. Tan will be accepting a new graduate student for Fall 2025.
In FEELab, we currently focus on two main research projects:
Harnessing the Power of Negative Emotions.
We aim to understand how children can use negative emotions like anger and sadness to their benefit and learn emotion-related skills to regulate these emotions adaptively.
Asian American Immigrant Parents’ Socialization of Children’s Emotions.
We aim to identify the unique challenges and opportunities first-generation immigrant parents from Asia face in supporting their children’s emotional development as they raise them in the US cultural context.