Children's Spontaneous Control of Facial Expression

Emotion regulation and understanding: implications for child psychopathology and therapy

“…Although the transition away from ''behavioral'' theories of emotion is not so simple in that younger children appear to have at least a limited ''mentalistic'' conception of emotion (e.g., Camras & Allison, 1989;Denham & Zoller, 1991;Gnepp, 1989;Harris & Saarni, 1989;Harter & Whitesell, 1989;Hughes & Dunn, 1998), the general developmental shift from a focus on situational variables to an emphasis on internal variables is well supported in the literature (e.g., DeConti & Dickerson, 1994;Harris, 1993;Thompson, 1987;Weiner & Graham, 1984). As children grow, their emotional inferences contain a more complex and differentiated use of several types of information, such as moral variables (e.g., Barden, Zelko, Duncan, & Masters, 1980;Nunner-Winkler & Sodian, 1988), historical facts/ personal information (e.g., Gnepp, 1983Gnepp, , 1989, display rule use (Cole, 1986;Garner, 1996;Saarni, 1979), relevance of different themes across developmental periods (Strayer, 1986), relational and contextual factors (e.g., who is present; e.g., Covell & Abramovitch, 1987), and the target child's goals or beliefs (e.g., Harris, 1994;Harris, Donnelly, Guz, & Pitt-Watson, 1986;Wiggers & Van Lieshout, 1985). This development appears to be somewhat slower for complex emotions like pride, shame, or embarrassment (e.g., Harter & Whitesell, 1989;Lewis, 1993aLewis, , 1993bSeidner, Stipek, & Feshbach, 1988;Stipek & DeCotis, 1988).…”

“…Researchers examine the child's actual expressions and also ask for the child's description of how s/he feels about the prize. Children as young as 3 exhibit some use of display rules (e.g., Cole, 1986), with girls doing so more frequently than boys (e.g., Davis, 1995). Relatedly, children can ''hide'' their emotion by changing their facial expression as early as age 3 (e.g., Lewis, Stanger, & Sullivan, 1989).…”

Young children discriminate genuine from fake smiles and expect people displaying genuine smiles to be more prosocial

“…However there is one context in particular in which young children (again girls especially) have been observed to produce unfelt polite smiles. Cole (1986) found that upon receiving a disappointing gift, 3-and 4-year-old girls will still smile (see also Cole, Zahn-Waxler, & Smith, 1994). They do this more when the gift giver is present than absent, suggesting that they do it to maintain a positive relationship with the gift giver.…”

Parental Socialization of Emotion Expression: Gender Differences and Relations to Child Adjustment.

“…Therefore, girls may be more likely than boys to convey submissive emotions and less likely to express disharmonious emotions. Evidence for such gender differences has been observed in certain contexts (Cole, 1986;Cole, Zahn-Waxler, & Smith, 1994;Saarni, 1984).…”