Age-related changes in the relation between preschoolers’ anger and persistence

Abstract

Although the functionalist perspective on emotional development posits that emotions serve adaptive functions, empirical tests of the role of anger mostly focus on how anger contributes to dysfunction. Developmentally, as children gain agency and skill at emotion regulation between the ages of 36 months and 48 months, their modulation of anger may facilitate its functional role for behavior. We examined this possibility through study of how 120 children’s anger and sadness were related to persistence during the transparent locked box task at ages 36 and 48 months. Using survival analyses, we examined how children’s anger and sadness were related to their giving up during the challenging task, and whether those relations were moderated by age. Using hidden Markov models (HMMs), we examined how children transitioned among anger, sadness, and on-task behavior states and whether those dynamics differed with age. Survival analysis revealed that age moderated the relation between anger and giving up. Greater anger was associated with greater likelihood of giving up earlier in the task at 36 months but with lower likelihood of giving up at 48 months. HMM analyses revealed that children were more likely to transition from a Calm/On-task to Calm/Off-task state at 36 months than at 48 months; that children were more likely to remain in an Anger/On-task state at 36 months than at 48 months; and that children were more likely to transition from Calm/On-task to Anger/On-task, and from Anger/On-task back to Calm/On-task at 48 months than at 36 months. Taken together, the findings suggest that anger appraisals may facilitate children in maintaining persistence, but that this functionality may develop with age.

Changes in children’s anger, sadness, and persistence across blocked goals: Implications for self‐regulation

“…Our findings demonstrate that children's emotions and persistence do indeed change during the task as theorized (Bridges & Grolnick, 1995;Cole et al, 2019;Lazarus, 1991). None of the groups showed a steady increase in persistence, and in all but one group, children's persistence decreased over time (albeit to different degrees), which was consistent with a previous study that found the likelihood of children giving up the task increased with time (Ramsook et al, 2020). In addition, our findings also suggest that it might be difficult for young children to increase or maintain regulatory efforts to achieve a goal even for just 2 to 4 min and add empirical evidence to the conceptualization that self-regulation operates as a finite resource which could be depleted through repeated use (Baumeister & Vohs, 2018;Muraven & Baumeister, 2000).…”

“…There have been a small but increasing number of studies that have reported empirical evidence supporting the functions of anger and sadness (Dennis et al, 2009; He et al, 2012; Lench & Levine, 2008; Ramsook et al, 2020; Tan & Smith, 2018). For instance, He et al (2012) found that higher levels of anger were related to higher levels of persistence during a goal blocking task in a sample of preschoolers.…”

“…If researchers aggregate the levels of child anger and persistence across the situation—as most studies do—these two groups would have similar levels of anger despite having different levels of persistence. Indeed, in the two exceptions that did treat emotions and persistence as an ongoing process, Helm et al (2016) and Ramsook et al (2020) found that children’s emotions and persistence fluctuated throughout a goal blocking task. The findings from these studies highlight the importance of analyzing emotion and persistence as a dynamic process in order for the real‐time changes in emotion and persistence to be examined.…”

“…Helm et al (2016) found that children’s ability to persist despite frustration in a goal blocking situation increased from 24 to 60 months of age. Another study examining children’s emotions and persistence during a goal blocking task found that anger was related to a higher likelihood of quitting the task for 3‐year‐olds but was associated with a lower likelihood for 4‐year‐olds (Ramsook et al, 2020). These results suggest that older children may utilize the function of negative emotions to facilitate persistence better than their younger counterparts.…”

Tutorial Action and Emotional Development of Students as Elements of Improved Development and Preventing Problems Related with Coexistence and Social Aspects

“…Pedagogical theories that focus their study on global educational processes and lifelong education reveal the importance of student emotions and affect in these processes, in that they contribute to the improved academic and social education of students [ 7 ]. In other words, a better regulation and management of emotions and affect provoke integral improvements to personality development at an individual level, and to society overall [ 8 , 9 ].…”