Pleased and surprised: Children's cognitive theory of emotion

Abstract

This study looks at two emotions that are determined by whether a person's mental state matches or mismatches the state of the world. Results show that children from 3 years understand that being ‘pleased’ is a function of the match or mismatch between desire and reality. That is between what a person wants and what a person gets. A structurally similar problem is presented by the emotion ‘surprise’. ‘Surprise’ is a function of the match or mismatch between belief and reality. That is between what a person believes or expects to be the case and what actually is the case. It is shown that ‘surprise’ is not understood until children are 5 years old at the earliest. This developmental discrepancy can partly be explained by the fact that ‘surprise’ requires an understanding of belief as a misrepresentation. This is not typically understood before children reach 4 years of age. However, children younger than 4 years can understand ‘pleased’ as the result of reaching or not reaching a desired situation. Results also show that it is not until 5 years of age that children understand ‘happiness’ when ‘happiness’ is made dependent on belief about reality and not on reality itself. The fact that children understand ‘surprise’ and belief‐based ‘happiness’ later than 4 years indicates a general lag between understanding belief and its role in determining emotion.

Children’s strategic theory of mind

“…An alternative explanation is development in either the epistemic capacity to attribute beliefs to others in response to incentives or the practical capacity to transition from attributed beliefs to attributed actions. Indirect support for the failure of the practical capacity comes from experiments showing that children may recognize faulty beliefs in others early, although failing to use this knowledge to anticipate the other's surprise (27), actions such as false statements (28), or emotional reactions (29) correctly. Future experiments should discriminate the contributions of children's developing recursive reasoning, epistemic understanding, practical reasoning, and more general factors (e.g., behavioral control) (30,31).…”

Children's understanding of mental states as causes of emotions

“…Happiness, sadness and anger are emotions that clearly focus on the outcome: did one receive what was desired? In the literature, these emotions are referred to as desire-based emotions (Hadwin and Perner, 1991;Wellman and Banerjee, 1991). Harter and Whitesell (1989) asked for the causes of these emotions and children typically referred to 'getting what was wanted' for happiness, and to undesirable outcomes for anger and sadness.…”

“…Most research on theory of mind and emotions provides participants with explicit information about the protagonist's mental states and children are asked for emotion predictions (Hadwin and Perner, 1991;Harris et al, 1989;Rieffe et al, 2001;Symons et al, 1997;Wellman, 1990). Although there is no question about the theoretical significance of this work and the usefulness for our understanding of children's daily functioning, it is also important to realize that people quite often fail to explicitly express their mental states in everyday life.…”

“…Around the age of five, children appreciate the fact that people have different desires and beliefs, and predict others' emotions accordingly, even if they find those desires undesirable (Rieffe et al, 2001) or find others' beliefs to differ from their own situational knowledge (Hadwin and Perner, 1991;Harris et al, 1989;Symons et al, 1997;Wellman, 1990). Therefore, an important gain in children's understanding of emotions is made at around the age of five when they show understanding that emotions are based on desires and beliefs, which can differ from person to person, irrespective of the content of their own mental states.…”

Surprise! 20-month-old infants understand the emotional consequences of false beliefs

“…To date, children's understanding of the causal relationship between false belief and surprise has been investigated using elicited-response tasks in which children were asked direct questions about a mistaken agent's inner emotional state (e.g., how the agent would feel) or external emotional display (e.g., which object would cause the agent to make a surprised face) (e.g., Hadwin & Perner, 1991;MacLaren & Olsen, 1993;Ruffman & Keenan, 1996;Wellman & Banerjee, 1991;Wellman & Bartsch, 1988). For instance, MacLaren and Olsen (1993) tested 1 Note that Sarah would be surprised if she were to find a snake in her lunchbox.…”