Spain has been one of the countries most affected by the health crisis derived from COVID-19. Within this country, the city of Madrid has registered the highest number of infections and deaths. This circumstance led to the adoption of strict confinement measures for a period of 6 weeks. The objective of the present study was to investigate the psychological effects that this confinement has had on the psychological well-being of a sample of children from Madrid. A total of 167 families with children aged between 3 and 11 years participated in this study. The parents evaluated the children through the System of Evaluation of Children and Adolescents (SENA) scale in the month of February and refilled part of the same scale after the children had spent between 4 and 6 weeks confined. The comparison between the two measures showed no change among the 3-year-old children. However, change was observed among the 6–10-year-old. Children in Primary Education obtained lower scores in dimensions related to self-regulation (emotional, attentional, and behavioral) and in willingness to study. The results are discussed in light of the situation experienced between the months of March and May 2020.

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Envy is the religion of the mediocre. It comforts them, it responds to the worries that gnaw at them and finally it rots their souls, allowing them to justify their meanings and their greed until they believe these to be virtues.-Carlos Ruiz Zafó n Abstract ''The niche of envy'' is a cross-disciplinary attempt to capture and understand the complex and self-conscious emotion of envy as unfolded within social relationships and cultural settings. One of our main interests concerns how children come to understand envy in ontogenesis. Accordingly, we review existing theoretical approaches to understanding envy and introduce preliminary data about children's understanding of envy. This paper consists of three sections. In the first section, we define envy by introducing the conditions and components that form part of it. We emphasize the fact that envy is a complex and embodied emotion, which embraces a triadic relationship, social comparison, and inequality. In this section, we also introduce social conditions that may facilitate envy and its consequences, such as hostility and aggression. The second section deals with coping strategies for envy. Here, we integrate research from different disciplines, e.g., socio-cultural, psychological, and anthropological research. Finally, in the third section, we introduce a cross-cultural and developmental view of how envy is embodied. We briefly address and offer a critique of Klein's psychoanalytic view and present recent results from our cross-cultural studies of the ontogenesis of understanding envy.

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La definición de las competencias sociales y emocionales no ha sido tarea fácil para los psicólogos. Existen varios criterios e indicios que permiten evaluar en qué medida los niños y los adultos se comportan de forma competente. No obstante, la educación formal recibida para alcanzar dichas competencias es, por lo general, muy escasa o nula. Los resultados de los programas clásicos basados en el aprendizaje de técnicas específicas indican que se produce muy poca generalización a contextos naturales y que la duración de los efectos de mejora es muy corta. Existen, sin embargo, otro tipo de intervenciones que apoyándose en la filosofía e incitando a los niños a reflexionar de forma crítica, proporcionan una formación más profunda y resultados más duraderos. Nuestra propuesta defiende un currículo centrado en la mejora de estas competencias durante el segundo ciclo de Educación Infantil (3-6 años) trabajando desde un enfoque basado en el programa Filosofía para Niños pero que también ofrezca la posibilidad de aprender pautas concretas de conducta, cognitivas y de relación con los demás.

Envy is a negative and self-conscious emotion that emerges from social comparison. Children compare their possessions and skills with others to construct the Self. The aim of this study is to explore what type of objects tangible and intangibleare more salient in invidious comparison in order to evaluate the intensity of envy and differences found according to age. Participants included children between the ages of three and nine years (N = 236), who were asked to score how an envious character in a story felt upon witnessing the misfortune of the envied person. In one case, the envied object was tangible (i.e., a scooter), in the other, it was intangible (i.e., being chosen due to possessing greater skill). The results indicated that envy is more intense for all of the age groups in the situations related to possessing greater skill rather than those related to possessing material objects. The younger children (3-6 years) showed more intense malicious envy than the older children. We then discuss the results regarding the role of intangible and tangible possessions in invidious comparison during childhood development.

de 3 a 5 años, pertenecientes a dos culturas -zapotecos y españoles-, para las cuales el significado y el modo de afrontar la envidia son distintos. Dos tareas fueron diseñadas, una para obtener atribuciones emocionales de un personaje que presenciaba la destrucción de un objeto de su compañero, que previamente había deseado y que no le era posible conseguir, la segunda explora la relación entre emociones, explicaciones y estrategias de solución al conflicto. Los resultados muestran que los niños de ambas culturas, y desde los tres años, atribuyen alegría por el daño ajeno. Sin embargo, el tipo de explicaciones y las estrategias de solución al conflicto varían según la cultura y la edad. Discutimos estos resultados en relación con el papel que ejerce la cultura en el desarrollo de la comprensión emocional. Palabras clave: Comprensión emocional, envidia, teoría de la mente, estudio transcultural.

Numerous studies have shown the important role of both emotion regulation (ER) and emotion knowledge (EK) in child development. Despite the number of studies carried out on both variables, there is practically no research on the developmental relationship between these two constructs. We present a longitudinal study to explore the relationship between EK and ER in preschoolers in which we measured these variables over 3 academic years in a cohort of 108 preschool children using the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) and the Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC). The ERC is divided into 2 subscales: Emotional Regulation (ER) and Lability/Negativity (L/N). Two cross-lagged models were constructed in order to examine the predictive power of ER and L/N on EK across the three time points. The results suggest that ER is an ability that precedes and predicts EK during preschool years. We also discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.