title: Children's understanding and experience of mixed emotions: the roles of age, gender, and empathy.
abstract: The present study examined the development of children's ability report understanding and experiencing allocentric mixed emotions, and explored the relation of gender and empathic ability to these skills. Participants (128 elementary school-aged children [63 boys, 65 girls]) were shown a movie clip with bittersweet themes to elicit mixed emotions. Findings from this study are consistent with prior research (Larsen, To, & Fireman, 2007), supporting a developmental progression in children's ability to both understand and report experiencing mixed emotions, with the two as distinct skills and children reporting understanding earlier than experiencing of emotions. Consistent with previous research, girls performed significantly better on the emotion experience task. Finally, results provided evidence that empathy partially mediates the relationship between age and reports of mixed emotion experience, but no evidence that empathy plays a role in mixed emotional understanding.
authors.affiliation: Suffolk University, Department of Psychology, 41 Temple Street, 6th Floor, Boston, MA 02114, USA.
authors.forename: Ruth T
authors.initials: RT
authors.lastname: Zajdel
authors.forename: Jill Myerow
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Bloom
authors.forename: Gary
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Fireman
authors.forename: Jeff T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Larsen
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D004645:Empathy / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D057566:Self Report; D012737:Sex Factors