Children's Use and Knowledge of Display Rules for Anger Following Hypothetical Vignettes versus Following Live Peer Interaction

Abstract

Our primary goal was to examine the correspondence between children's self-reported use and knowledge of display rules for anger following hypothetical vignettes versus following live peer interactions. Our secondary goal was to investigate whether children's self-reported experience and self-reported expression of anger were related their observed anger expression, considered an observational measure of use of display rules for anger. Participants were 274 second-grade children. Children were first interviewed about their use and knowledge of display rules for anger in gameplaying situations depicted through hypothetical vignettes. Several months later, children interacted with a confederate in standardized games designed to simulate the vignettes and answered the same questions about display rules. Children's responses were moderately related across the two contexts. However, following the live interactions, compared to the hypothetical vignettes, children reported feeling less anger, expressing less anger, intending to hide their anger more, and dissembling their anger more. In addition, there were differences in the quality and quantity of strategies for hiding anger that children generated across the two contexts. Observations of anger expression were not related to self-reports of either the experience or expression of anger.

Individual Differences in Responses to Provocation and Frequent Victimization by Peers

“…The findings we have presented are important because they show that individual differences in feelings of anger, which are accessible to children, are associated with victimization and maladaptive responses in emotion eliciting contexts. Observational research has found that individual differences in the subjective experience of anger are not strongly associated with displays of emotion when one peer is provoking another [22,23]. The discrepancy with our findings, however, might be attributed to a restricted range in feelings of anger assessed in the laboratory studies.…”

“…Kochenderf-Ladd also found that young school-age victims were not angrier than non-victims but were more likely than non-victims to be motivated to seek revenge [20]. Among older children associations between subjective feelings and observable displays are weak to non-existent [21][22][23], although children with stronger motivation to maintain positive social interactions are less likely to display anger or aggression in response to provocation [24][25][26]. Taken together, the findings highlight the importance of examining motivation and feelings as indicators of subjective emotional experience and including a range of contexts in measures of emotion processes [27].…”

Emotional display rules and emotion self‐regulation: Associations with bullying and victimization in community‐based after school programs

“…Studies that have examined aggression and not bullying have found that aggressive children are less likely to use display rules for anger than non-aggressive children (Underwood et al, 1992). Others have found rejected and aggressive second grade children are no different than their peers when using and understanding display rules in live or hypothetical situations (Parker et al, 2001). Our findings mirror those by suggesting that children who repeatedly aggress against the same children perform as well as their peers on measures of emotional display rule knowledge.…”

Social Information Processing and Coping Strategies of Shy/Withdrawn and Aggressive Children: Does Friendship Matter?

“…Researchers could compare selfreports with observations regarding children's emotion regulation in the context of peer relationships (e.g., McDowell, O'Neil, & Parke, 2000;Parker et al, 2001). Further, emotions such as being afraid or fearful, and mixed emotions such as feeling both sad and mad about the same situation, might be options as well as emotion intensity ratings.…”