title: Children's scripts for social emotions: causes and consequences are more central than are facial expressions.
abstract: Understanding and recognition of emotions relies on emotion concepts, which are narrative structures (scripts) specifying facial expressions, causes, consequences, label, etc. organized in a temporal and causal order. Scripts and their development are revealed by examining which components better tap which concepts at which ages. This study investigated whether a facial expression or a brief story describing an emotion's cause and consequence was the stronger cue to basic-level and social emotions. Children (N = 120, 4-10 years) freely labelled the emotion implied by faces and, separately, stories for six basic-level emotions (happiness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, and contempt) and three social emotions (embarrassment, compassion, and shame). Cause-and-consequence stories were the stronger cue overall, especially for fear, disgust, and social emotions. Faces were the stronger cue only for surprise. Younger children assimilated social emotions into basic-level emotion categories (sadness and anger); older children differentiated them. Differentiation occurred earlier for stories than for faces.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Boston College, McGuinn Hall, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA. widensh@bc.edu
authors.forename: Sherri C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Widen
authors.forename: James A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Russell
mesh_terms: D001245:Association Learning; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D032882:Comprehension; D003463:Cues; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D018187:Personal Construct Theory; D012660:Semantics; D012931:Social Environment; D013240:Stereotyping