Children's consensual knowledge about the experiential determinants of emotion.

Abstract

Kindergarten, third-, and sixth-grade children were given vignettes describing experiences that were likely to produce emotional states, and their consensus about the probable affective reaction was determined. A sample of eight social and personal (private) experiences was utilized in the vignettes: success, failure, dishonesty (caught or not caught), experiencing nurturance or aggression, and experiencing justified or unjustified punishment. The potential affective reactions that children were asked to choose among included happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and neutral affect. There were no sex differences. Children of all ages agreed that relatively simple experiences such as success and nurturance would elicit a happy reaction. For other categories of experience, multiple consensuses appeared for more than one affective reaction. There were developmental differences in the affective reactions anticipated to five of the eight experience categories. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive and social learning determinants of knowledge about the experimental antecedents of emotion for oneself and others.

Emotion regulation and understanding: implications for child psychopathology and therapy

“…Although the transition away from ''behavioral'' theories of emotion is not so simple in that younger children appear to have at least a limited ''mentalistic'' conception of emotion (e.g., Camras & Allison, 1989;Denham & Zoller, 1991;Gnepp, 1989;Harris & Saarni, 1989;Harter & Whitesell, 1989;Hughes & Dunn, 1998), the general developmental shift from a focus on situational variables to an emphasis on internal variables is well supported in the literature (e.g., DeConti & Dickerson, 1994;Harris, 1993;Thompson, 1987;Weiner & Graham, 1984). As children grow, their emotional inferences contain a more complex and differentiated use of several types of information, such as moral variables (e.g., Barden, Zelko, Duncan, & Masters, 1980;Nunner-Winkler & Sodian, 1988), historical facts/ personal information (e.g., Gnepp, 1983Gnepp, , 1989, display rule use (Cole, 1986;Garner, 1996;Saarni, 1979), relevance of different themes across developmental periods (Strayer, 1986), relational and contextual factors (e.g., who is present; e.g., Covell & Abramovitch, 1987), and the target child's goals or beliefs (e.g., Harris, 1994;Harris, Donnelly, Guz, & Pitt-Watson, 1986;Wiggers & Van Lieshout, 1985). This development appears to be somewhat slower for complex emotions like pride, shame, or embarrassment (e.g., Harter & Whitesell, 1989;Lewis, 1993aLewis, , 1993bSeidner, Stipek, & Feshbach, 1988;Stipek & DeCotis, 1988).…”

Children's understanding of mental states as causes of emotions

“…To ensure that the youngest group would fully understand the emotion concepts involved, we restricted ourselves to the four basic emotions happiness, anger, sadness and fear (Barden et al, 1980). Moreover, anger and sadness are both plausible reactions to one and the same scenario, because a situation can arouse anger in one person and sadness in the other, depending on whether one concentrates on the cause of the negative outcome or on the negative consequences (Stein and Levine, 1989).…”

“…Barden et al, 1980;Harris et al, 1987;Trabasso et al, 1981). Yet, children also have to understand that emotions can be a consequence of a person's interpretation of a situation and are not just a mechanical product of the situation by itself.…”

A força do pensamento deôntico: O vitimizador feliz na atribuição de emoções na criança

“…Quanto ao tipo de emoções atribuídas aos transgressores, as pesquisas efectuadas têm mostrado que quando as crianças são solicitadas a atribuir emoções a um transgressor que obteve resultados tangíveis pelo facto de ter violado uma norma moral (e.g., roubar o chocolate de um companheiro; empurrá-lo de um baloiço), enquanto as mais novas (4-6 anos) tendem a atribuir-lhe emoções positivas (e.g., «o vitimizador sente-se bem e feliz»; Arsenio & Kramer, 1992;Barden, Zelko, Duncan, & Masters, 1980), as mais velhas (8-9 anos) tendem a atribuir-lhe emoções negativas (e.g., «o transgressor sente-se mal e infeliz»; Lourenço, 1993;Nunner-Winkler & Sodian, 1988). Este quadro, contudo, é um pouco mais complicado quando a análise é mais detalhada.…”

“…Por exemplo, se há estudos onde não ocorreu a atribuição de emoções positivas por parte de crianças entre os 5-8 anos (e.g., Harter & Whitesell, 1989), outros há onde a incidência de tais emoções continua durante os anos escolares e mesmo na vida adulta (e.g., Murgatryod & Robinson, 1993). Além disso, não há praticamente nenhuma pesquisa onde as crianças mais novas atribuam apenas emoções positivas, e as mais velhas apenas emoções negativas ou mistas (e.g., Arsenio & Ford, 1985;Barden, et al, 1980;Keller, Schuster, Fang Fu-xi, Tang Hong, & Edelstein, 1996;Nunner-Winkler & Sodian, 1998;Yuill et al, 1996).…”