How being observed influences preschoolers’ emotions following (less) deserving help

Gerdemann, Stella C.; Büchner, Ronja; Hepach, Robert

doi:10.1111/sode.12578

Cited by 15 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 83 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Importantly, it is not children’s elevated posture per se that reflected positive emotions but rather the direction of the effects was such that positive outcomes, which are generally associated with positive emotions, resulted in elevated body posture. In contrast, negative events such as failing to achieve a goal 42 , 58 , receiving undeserving rewards 51 , 59 , or making unjustified requests for help 52 resulted in lowered body posture.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Similarly, success at a difficult task or failure at an easy task have been shown to induce changes in children’s body posture at three years of age 49 , highlighting consistency in the findings across the life span 42 . show that 2-year-old children display increased positive emotions, indicated by more upright body posture, when they successfully achieve a goal for themselves or when they successfully help someone else achieve a goal—but posture is lower if no goal is achieved for anyone (see 51 , 52 for similar applications of the measure). The authors particularly stress the link between body posture and emotional expression and highlight the possibility that task success could trigger increased positive emotions which is reflected in elevated body posture.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Children’s affective involvement in early word learning

Outters

Hepach

Behne

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The current study set out to examine the underlying physiological mechanisms of and the emotional response associated with word learning success in young 3-year-old predominantly white children. In particular, we examined whether children’s physiological arousal following a word learning task predicts their word learning success and whether successful learning in turn predicts children’s subsequent positive emotions. We presented children (n = 50) with a cross-situational word learning task and measured their pupillary arousal following completion of the task, as well as changes to their upper body posture following completion of the task, as indices of children’s emotions following task completion. Children who showed greater physiological arousal following the novel word recognition task (n = 40) showed improved subsequent word recognition performance. We found that children showed more elevated posture after completing a familiar word learning task compared to completing a novel word learning task (n = 33) but results on children’s individual learning success and postural elevation were mixed. We discuss the findings with regards to children’s affective involvement in word learning.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children’s affective involvement in early word learning

Outters

Hepach

Behne

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This could for instance be the case if children's upper body posture varies due to crouching, jumping or running. A recent body of work has shown that children's change in chest expansion is a valid index of the valence of children's emotional response [ 52 , 61 ]. For instance, in one study, the patterns for children's change in chest expansion were similar to those for emotion valence ratings provided by adult coders (Study 1, [ 52 ]).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ontogeny of children's social emotions in response to (un)fairness

et al. 2022

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Humans have a deeply rooted sense of fairness, but its emotional foundation in early ontogeny remains poorly understood. Here, we asked if and when 4- to 10-year-old children show negative social emotions, such as shame or guilt, in response to advantageous unfairness expressed through a lowered body posture (measured using a Kinect depth sensor imaging camera). We found that older, but not younger children, showed more negative emotions, i.e. a reduced upper body posture, after unintentionally disadvantaging a peer on (4,1) trials than in response to fair (1,1) outcomes between themselves and others. Younger children, in contrast, expressed more negative emotions in response to the fair (1,1) split than in response to advantageous inequity. No systematic pattern of children's emotional responses was found in a non-social context, in which children divided resources between themselves and a non-social container. Supporting individual difference analyses showed that older children in the social context expressed negative emotions in response to advantageous inequity without directly acting on this negative emotional response by rejecting an advantageously unfair offer proposed by an experimenter at the end of the study. These findings shed new light on the emotional foundation of the human sense of fairness and suggest that children's negative emotional response to advantageous unfairness developmentally precedes their rejection of advantageously unfair resource distributions.

show abstract

“…Children may risk being viewed as more concerned for their own gains even if it comes at a cost to others. In the context of cooperation, signalling one's fear of a peers' evaluation and rejection, for example, through loweredbody posture, may have an adaptive value for children who aspire to good terms with their peers (see also Gerdemann, Büchner, & Hepach, 2022b).…”

Section: Fear Can Promote Competition Defensive Aggression and Domina...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The human fear paradox: Affective origins of cooperative care

Großmann

2022

Behav Brain Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Already as infants humans are more fearful than our closest living primate relatives, the chimpanzees. Yet heightened fearfulness is mostly considered maladaptive, as it is thought to increase the risk of developing anxiety and depression. How can this human fear paradox be explained? The fearful ape hypothesis presented herein stipulates that, in the context of cooperative caregiving and provisioning unique to human great ape group life, heightened fearfulness was adaptive. This is because from early in ontogeny fearfulness expressed and perceived enhanced care-based responding and provisioning from, while concurrently increasing cooperation with, mothers and others. This explanation is based on a synthesis of existing research with human infants and children, demonstrating a link between fearfulness, greater sensitivity to and accuracy in detecting fear in others, and enhanced levels of cooperative behaviors. These insights critically advance current evolutionary theories of human cooperation by adding an early-developing affective component to the human cooperative makeup. Moreover, the current proposal has important cultural, societal and health implications, as it challenges the predominant view in WEIRD societies that commonly construe fearfulness as a maladaptive trait, potentially ignoring its evolutionary adaptive functions.

show abstract

How being observed influences preschoolers’ emotions following (less) deserving help

Cited by 15 publications

References 83 publications

Children’s affective involvement in early word learning

Children’s affective involvement in early word learning

The ontogeny of children's social emotions in response to (un)fairness

The human fear paradox: Affective origins of cooperative care

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About