The Development of Display Rule Knowledge: Linkages with Family Expressiveness and Social Competence

Abstract

The development of display rule knowledge and its associations with family expressiveness (Study 1) and peer competence (Study 2) were investigated among elementary school children. In Study 1, the display rule knowledge of 121 kindergartners and third graders was assessed using validated hypothetical scenarios. There were significant grade differences in display rule knowledge such that third graders compared to kindergartners more frequently combined expression regulation with prosocial reasoning, norm-maintenance, and self-protective motives. Maternal reports of family emotional climates indicated that aspects of negative expressiveness were related positively to self-protective display rules and negatively to prosocial display rules. Study 2 included 93 third and fifth graders who reported on their display rule knowledge and on their emotional reactions and strategies to resolve peer conflict. Classmates and teachers provided ratings on social competence. Age differences for display rule knowledge were not documented, but prosocial display rules were most consistently related to hypothetical peer conflict responses and social competence. The findings confirm that display rule knowledge is related in consistent and systematic ways to what children learn within the family emotional context, how they propose to resolve peer conflict, and how they are perceived by peers and teachers.

The relationship between second‐order false belief and display rules reasoning: the integration of cognitive and affective social understanding

“…In contrast, across the two display types, children's display rules understanding considerably improved with age: Whereas 6-and 8-year-olds steadily distinguished apparent from real emotion with growing accuracy, 4-year-olds did not do so, showing no distinction at all in half of their incorrect responses. The present findings did not replicate Gnepp and Hess's (1986; see also Jones et al, 1998) results that even 6-year-olds did not understand display rules and children found prosocial displays easier than self-presentational ones. In their scripts, the story protagonist's motivations to conceal real emotion were not provided to children.…”

Peer Rejection and Social Information‐Processing Factors in the Development of Aggressive Behavior Problems in Children

“…The second type of supporting research is the literature on social-cognitive and emotion-regulation correlates of social rejection. Rejected children perform less competently than average children at attending to and interpreting peer cues (Dodge & Feldman, 1990), at regulating emotion (Eisenberg et al, 1997), at social-problem-solving tasks (Nelson & Crick, 1999), at understanding appropriate display rules for behavior (Jones, Abbey, & Cumberland, 1998), and at behavioral expression of emotions (Hubbard, in press). All of these skills and patterns are hypothesized to develop during peer exchanges.…”

Effects of peer group rejection and a new group's norms on children's intergroup attitudes

“…Based on these studies, together with observational research and follow-forward longitudinal studies (see Rubin et al, 1998), peer rejection has long been associated with a range of indicators of internal distress, such as negative mood, anxiety, unhappiness, anger, depressive symptoms, and low self-esteem (see Sandstrom & Zakriski, 2004). In addition, rejected children perform less competently than other children on a range of cognitive tasks, including attending to and interpreting peer cues (Dodge & Feldman, 1990), solving social problem tasks (Nelson & Crick, 1999), and understanding appropriate display rules for behaviour (Jones, Abbey, & Cumberland, 1998). Perhaps not surprisingly, research has revealed that peer rejection is also associated with a range of antisocial behaviours by children during the middle childhood years.…”