Emotion expression is an important feature of healthy child development that has been found to show gender differences. However, there has been no empirical review of the literature on gender and facial, vocal, and behavioral expressions of different types of emotions in children. The present study constitutes a comprehensive meta-analytic review of gender differences, and moderators of differences, in emotion expression from infancy through adolescence. We analyzed 555 effect sizes from 166 studies with a total of 21,709 participants. Significant, but very small, gender differences were found overall, with girls showing more positive emotions (g = −.08) and internalizing emotions (e.g., sadness, anxiety, sympathy; g = −.10) than boys, and boys showing more externalizing emotions (e.g., anger; g = .09) than girls. Notably, gender differences were moderated by age, interpersonal context, and task valence, underscoring the importance of contextual factors in gender differences. Gender differences in positive emotions were more pronounced with increasing age, with girls showing more positive emotions than boys in middle childhood (g = −.20) and adolescence (g = −.28). Boys showed more externalizing emotions than girls at toddler/preschool age (g = .17) and middle childhood (g = .13) and fewer externalizing emotions than girls in adolescence (g = −.27). Gender differences were less pronounced with parents and were more pronounced with unfamiliar adults (for positive emotions) and with peers/when alone (for externalizing emotions). Our findings of gender differences in emotion expression in specific contexts have important implications for gender differences in children’s healthy and maladaptive development.

The present study examined gender differences in children's submissive and disharmonious emotions and parental attention to these emotions. Sixty children and their mothers and fathers participated when children were 4 and 6 years old. Children's emotion expression and parental responses during a game were coded. Girls expressed more submissive emotion than boys. Fathers attended more to girls' submissive emotion than to boys' at preschool age. Fathers attended more to boys' disharmonious emotion than to girls' at early school age. Parental attention at preschool age predicted later submissive expression level. Child disharmonious emotion predicted later externalizing symptoms. Gender differences in these emotions may occur as early as preschool age and may be subject to differential responding, particularly by fathers.

The authors investigated the effectiveness and specificity of the Penn Resiliency Program (PRP; J. E. Gillham, L. H. Jaycox, K. J. Reivich, M. E. P. Seligman, & T. Silver, 1990), a cognitivebehavioral depression prevention program. Children (N = 697) from 3 middle schools were randomly assigned to PRP, Control (CON), or the Penn Enhancement Program (PEP; K. J. Reivich, 1996; A. J. Shatté, 1997), an alternate intervention that controls for nonspecific intervention ingredients. Children's depressive symptoms were assessed through 3 years of follow-up. There was no intervention effect on average levels of depressive symptoms in the full sample. Findings varied by school. In 2 schools, PRP significantly reduced depressive symptoms across the follow-up relative to both CON and PEP. In the 3rd school, PRP did not prevent depressive symptoms. The authors discuss the findings in relation to previous research on PRP and the dissemination of prevention programs. Keywordsdepression; prevention; children; adolescence Several cognitive-behavioral interventions show promise in preventing depressive symptoms in youths (for recent reviews, see Horowitz & Garber, 2006;Merry, McDowell, Hetrick, Bir, & Muller, 2004). Among these are the Coping with Stress Course (Clarke & Lewinsohn, 1995), the Resourceful Adolescent Program (RAP; Shochet, Whitefield, & Holland, 1997), the LISA-T Program (Pössel, Horn, Groen, & Hautzinger, 2004), and the Penn Resiliency Program 1 (PRP; Gillham, Jaycox, Reivich, Seligman, & Silver, 1990). Despite this promise, however, depression prevention programs that demonstrate positive effects are rarely incorporated into school or clinical settings, and little is known about the effectiveness of most programs when delivered by the individuals who work in these settings.In addition, when these programs do work, it is usually unclear whether the cognitivebehavioral therapy skills or other nonspecific factors (e.g., time spent in a structured afterschool activity, attention from an adult, support from peers) are responsible. The majority of depression prevention studies compare cognitive-behavioral interventions with a nointervention control. Only a few studies have compared prevention programs with attention control groups or alternate interventions. Pattison and Lynd-Stevenson (2001) found that PRP did not significantly reduce or prevent depressive symptoms relative to both nointervention and attention control groups. The small sample size (N = 63) may have limited power to detect effects, however. Merry, McDowell, Wild, Bir, and Cunliffe (2004) compared RAP with a placebo control group consisting primarily of group arts and crafts activities and found some support for the efficacy of RAP relative to placebo, but the effect size was small, and effects were not found across different measures of depressive symptoms. The placebo condition used by Merry et al. controlled for several factors that are 1 PRP materials are available for use in research. Requests for the curriculum should be made to info@pennp...

Small but significant gender differences in emotion expressions have been reported for adults, with women showing greater emotional expressivity, especially for positive emotions and internalizing negative emotions such as sadness. But when, developmentally, do these gender differences emerge? And what developmental and contextual factors influence their emergence? This article describes a developmental bio-psycho-social model of gender differences in emotion expression in childhood. Prior empirical research supporting the model, at least with mostly White middle-class U.S. samples of youth, is presented. Limitations to the extant literature and future directions for research on gender and child emotion are suggested.

Background-Women and men are at risk for different types of stress-related disorders, with women at greater risk for depression and anxiety and men at greater risk for alcohol-use disorders. The present study examines gender differences in emotional and alcohol craving responses to stress that may relate to this gender divergence in disorders.