Facial Expressions Used by Children in a Conflict Situation

Abstract

72 pairs of kindergarten children were each given a brief play session involving an object with which only 1 child could play at a time. Facial expressions used by children defending their possession of the object were studied. Results showed a relationship between the facial expressions a child used and both his own subsequent behavior and that of his partner. "Agressive" facial expressions were associated with persistent attempts by the expressers to maintain access to the disputed object. Percipients of aggressive expressions were relatively hesitant about making a new attempt to take the object from the expresser. 1 nonaggressive expression was also followed by percipient hesitancy. The relationship of the aggressive expressions to both primate threat displays and human facial expressions of emotion is discussed.

The Plasticity of Emotional Development

“…Satir also contended that the essential aspect of all command features, embedded within any communication, can be characterized as requests for self-validation, implying positions such as "agree with me," "be on my side," "show me sympathy," or "validate me by valuing me." As an illustration of children's use of appeal functions or command features, Camras (1977) found that she could predict which child in a pair of 4-5-year-old children would become dominant in a conflict over who gets to hold a gerbil, by the children's facial expressions, particularly the use of lowered eyebrows. However, it is unlikely that these children would be able to articulate how their expressive gestures affected the unfolding of the competitive situation.…”

Gender differences in emotional development: A review of theories and research

“…Naturalistic observations of children's emotional expressivity are quite inconsistent in their conclusions concerning gender differences, again possibly due to a failure to study situational context systematically The context in which emotional expressions have been observed varies widely from study to study Cender differences in newborn and infant emotional expression have been studied m the presence of siblings and mothers (Jacobs & Moss, 1976, Malatesta & Haviland, 1982, Moss, 1967, in the process of separating from mothers, with and without a barrier (Fiering & Lewis, 1979, Coldberg & Lewis, 1969, Jacklin, Maccoby, & Dick, 1973, Robson, Pederson, & Moss, 1969, Skann, 1977, Trause, 1977, Van Lieshout, 1975, in the presence of unfamiliar adults (Kagan 1978, Lewis & Weinraub, 1979, and in the absence of any interpersonal or cognitive interactions (Feldman, Brody, & Miller, 1980, Osofsky & O'Connell, 1977, Phillips, King, & DuBois, 1978, Yang & Moss, 1978, Zeskind & Lester, 1978 Cender differences m preschoolers' emotional expressions have been studied in the context of interactions with peers (Camras, 1977, Landreth, 1941 and parents (Golding, 1982) As previously noted, differences m the situational context may help to account for the wide vanations in results concerning gender differences in emotional expressiveness For example, Landreth (1941) found that in an observational study of a preschool, girls cried more frequently as a result of accidental injury than did boys, whereas boys cried more frequently as a result of interactions with objects or conflicts with adults Many studies of gender differences m infant emotional expressiveness are studies of temperament, that is, the infants' reactive tendencies to external and internal stimulation Cognitive developmental theorists hypothesize that gender differences in temperament should influence and be influenced by the quality of mother-infant interactions, which would in turn differentially affect the emotional development of each sex Some reviews of infant temperament research indicate no evidence for any gender differences (Rothbart & Derryberry, 1981), vet Haviland and Malatesta (1981) review several studies which in...…”

Facial Affect Recognition in Violent and Nonviolent Antisocial Behavior Subtypes

“…Thus, according to the VIM model, impairments in emotion processing, especially in decoding distress-related facial cues, may facilitate or perpetuate harmful actions in violence-prone individuals. Although the classical VIM model was originally developed to explain emotional and moral deficits in psychopathy and has been developed further to the more neuroscientifically founded Integrated Emotion System model, evidence suggests that the basic assumptions from both theoretical approaches (i.e., a fear and empathy dysfunction) may not apply exclusively to psychopathy but to antisociality in general (Camras, 1977;Chaplin, Rice, & Harris, 1995;Marsh & Blair, 2008). Consistently, a large body of research has documented difficulties in affective face processing in various antisocial and psychopathic populations, with some studies showing specific impairments in the recognition of fearful (Blair et al, 2004;Montagne et al, 2005), sad (Dolan & Fullam, 2006;Eisenbarth, Alpers, Segrè, Calogero, & Angrilli, 2008;Hastings, Tangney, & Stuewig, 2008), angry (Fairchild, Stobbe, Van Goozen, Calder, & Goodyer, 2010;Schönenberg, Louis, Mayer, & Jusyte, 2013), surprised (Schönenberg, Christian, et al, 2014), or disgusted (Kosson, Suchy, Mayer, & Libby, 2002;Sato, Uono, Matsuura, & Toichi, 2009) facial cues.…”