Children's understanding of the interpersonal consequences of dissemblance of nonverbal emotional-expressive behavior

Abstract

Eighty-five children in three age groups (6–7, 10–11, and 13–14 years) participated in an interview study in which their beliefs were elicited about how others are likely to react when one presents an "emotional front." They also responded to questions about (a) their preference for adults versus peers as targets of genuine emotional expressiveness, (b) expected outcomes for children who either almost never reveal their feelings or who almost always do, and (c) how they construct a balance for themselves between when to reveal their real feelings and when not to. Age and sex differences were found for some social contexts and not for others. The oldest girls stood out on a number of comparisons as a unique group: They were more likely to believe that dissembled expressions would be taken at face value in a couple of social contexts, they were more likely to prefer peers as the recipients of genuine emotional-expressive displays, and they gave more complex reasoning about how to achieve a balance between dissemblance and expression of genuine feelings. The data are discussed from the standpoint of how naive theories of emotion are used by children to make sense of their social relations.