Various investigators have found that children's understanding of sadness and anger changes dramatically over the course of childhood. Researchers have found, for example, that sadness does not have the same self-deprecatory flavor for younger children as it does for older children. The focus of the present study is on whether the actual experience of sadness changes within the course of childhood. Five-and 7-year-old children were questioned regarding the frequency and quality of their feelings of sadness. Experiment 2 paid particular attention to whether children incorporated this emotion into their character. Younger children were found to deny sad experiences more than older children did and were less likely to see sadness as part of their emotional disposition. These results are discussed in terms of how the experience of sadness may change over the course of development.

Many investigators have observed that the emotional reaction of an adult to painful life circumstances is often very different from that of a child. Whereas an adult may react to an unpleasant life event with mild depression, a young child may react to the same event with crying, temper tantrums, or stomach aches. The present study is an attempt to empirically examine developmental differences in emotional expression. It suggests that there are cognitive and character structures that may be prerequisites for certain adult reactions to painful life events. The self-denigrating adult may perceive a discrepancy between selfrepresentation and ideal self. These structures in a child may not yet be stable enough to withstand such critical self-appraisal. Five and 7-year-old subjects were asked to give liking ratings to hypothetical children who had undergone a painful life event and to give evaluative ratings of themselves in the same situations. Older children evaluated a hypothetical other and themselves negatively, whereas the 5-year-olds could not extend their negative evaluation of a sad other to themselves. These results are discussed in terms of developmental changes in the depressive reaction.

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