Comparison of Sadness, Anger, and Fear Facial Expressions When Toddlers Look at Their Mothers

Abstract

Research suggests that sadness expressions may be more beneficial to children than other emotions when eliciting support from caregivers. It is unclear, however, when children develop the ability to regulate their displays of distress. The current study addressed this question. Distress facial expressions (e.g., fear, anger, and sadness) were examined in 24-month-old toddlers throughout 4 episodes as well as specifically during looks to their mothers. Consistent with hypotheses and the literature, toddlers expressed sadness more frequently and with more intensity than target emotions only during looks to their mothers. These findings indicate that toddlers as young as 24 months of age are using particular emotional displays to elicit support from the social environment.

Attuned to the positive? Awareness and responsiveness to others’ positive emotion experience and display

“…Again, emotions were selected to have clear positive or negative valence and a documented nonverbal display (Campos et al 2013;Ekman 1972;Gonzaga et al 2001;Tracy and Robins 2007). Sadness and fear provided a strong test of our predictions because the distress signals associated with these two emotions can elicit caregiving responses (e.g., Buss and Kiel 2004) that could also promote relationship building.…”

Fear Attenuated and Affection Augmented: Male Self-Presentation in a Romantic Context

“…This was true of Clark et al (1996) and Timmers et al (1998). Studies of the way that facial behaviors are used in strategic communication, on the other hand, tend either to rely on the judgments of lay observers who code the affective content of the behaviors (as opposed to facial behavior itself; e.g., Buss and Kiel 2004) or to investigate strategic facial behavior only in the broadest of senses, by examining the way the sociality of emotional episodes affects facial movements (e.g., Fridlund 1991).…”

The Relation Between Anger Coping Strategies, Anger Mood and Somatic Complaints in Children and Adolescents

“…Yet, within the Western, individualistic culture, anger expression is not promoted either. For example, we see that mothers pay less attention to their angry toddlers; they mostly ignore them, whereas the expression of sadness or fear more often evokes immediate maternal support (Buss and Kiel 2004). Most studies on anger have concentrated on aggression (e.g., Lemerise and Dodge 1993) or hiding one's anger (e.g., Underwood 1997), and only few studies have examined the adaptive function of anger expression (e.g., , despite the fact that anger occurs more often without aggression (DiGiuseppe et al 1994;Averill 1982).…”