Thinking about Feeling: Adults' and Children's Judgements of Emotional Expressions in Others

Abstract

Both adults and children hold gender stereotypes related to emotion. These stereotypes are thought to be socialised in accordance with emotion display rules – social norms that govern how, when, and where males and females can express certain emotions. Happiness, sadness, and fear are generally associated with females, whereas anger and pride are more often associated with males. The present study aimed to determine whether gender stereotypes held by adults and children would influence their interpretation of emotional expressions in others. 73 adult participants, 18 years and over, and 63 child participants, between 7-10 years old, rated emotional expressions portrayed by male and female adults and children. Participants rated the expressions in terms of whether they were acceptable, sincere, dispositional, and situation caused. The emotions used in this study were anger, happiness, sadness, fear, and pride. Emotional expressions also ranged in intensity from neutral (no emotion), to mild and extreme expressions. Accompanying the emotional expression was a short story explaining the context of the emotional expression, and a statement about the target’s mental state e.g., “Sarah is feeling happy”. Emotional expressions either occurred in an interpersonal or an achievement context. It was hypothesised that acceptability ratings would conform to gender stereotypes of emotion whereby happiness, sadness, and fear would be rated as more acceptable for females to express, whereas anger and pride would be rated as more acceptable for males to express. Gender consistent emotions were also hypothesised to be rated as more dispositional. On the other hand, gender inconsistent emotions were hypothesised to be rated as more sincere and more due to the situation. It was also hypothesised that there would be context effects, whereby gender inconsistent emotions would be tolerated if expressed in a context associated with that gender (i.e., interpersonal contexts for females, achievement contexts for males). Finally, it was expected that children’s ratings would closely resemble adults’ ratings. The results showed that the acceptability ratings largely conformed to gender stereotypes of emotion. Happiness, sadness, and fear were rated as more acceptable for females to express, and the expression of anger was rated as more acceptable for males. An unexpected finding was that the expression of pride was rated as more acceptable for females compared to males. Children tended to rate the emotional expressions in the same manner as the adults. The sincerity, disposition, and situation findings obtained in the present study were inconsistent with the initial predictions. Although there was an influence of context on adults’ ratings, children’s ratings were inconsistent with the idea that interpersonal contexts are female oriented and achievement contexts are male oriented. It can be concluded that both adults and children interpret emotional expressions differently based on gender, however there is still a lot to learn in the area of gender and emotion.