47 Gender construction in children’s emotion expressions

Abstract

Emotion expression helps others understand how one feels. The ability to express one’s emotions appropriately is an important element of a healthy socio-emotional development because it facilitates the establishment of effective social relationships. However, it has been suggested that there are gender differences in children’s emotion expression, which sometimes can create difficulties in social relationships. In this chapter, we present a comprehensive review of the literature on gender differences in children’s expressions of emotions. Findings show that when gender differences are found, they tend to be small, showing girls expressing emotions more frequently than boys. However, we need to be cautious when interpreting these findings because gender differences tend to be mediated by contextual factors, such as age, interpersonal context, culture, language, or task valence, underscoring the relevance of contextual factors in gender differences. This chapter helps our understanding of how girls and boys express their emotions, which in turn might help us to get a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms behind girls’ and boys’ social relationships and how gender construction in emotion expression might develop through childhood and adolescence. Limitations of the existing literature and future directions for research on gender differences in children’s emotion expression are suggested.