Are You Really Happy? Children’s Understanding of Real vs. Pretend Emotions

Francesc Sidera,Elisabet Serrat,Anna Amadó

doi:10.1007/s12144-012-9159-9

Abstract

AbstractThis paper studies children’s capacity to understand that the emotions displayed in pretend play contexts do not necessarily correspond to internal emotions, and that pretend emotions may create false beliefs in an observer. A new approach is taken by asking children about pretend emotions in terms of pretence-reality instead of appearance-reality. A total of 37 four-year-olds and 33 six-year-olds were asked to participate in tasks where they had to pretend an emotion or where they were told stories in which the protagonists pretended an emotion. In each task children were asked: a) if the pretend emotion was real or just pretended and b) if an observer would think that the emotional expression was real or just pretended. Results showed that four-year-olds are capable of understanding that pretend emotions are not necessarily real. Overall, six-year-olds performed better than younger children. Furthermore, both age groups showed difficulty in understanding that pretend emotions might unintentionally mislead an observer. Results are discussed in relation to previous research on children’s ability to understand pretend play and the emotional appearance-reality distinction.

Highlights

The Theory of Mind (ToM) is considered as a crucial ability for children’s social development, as it allows them to perceive and interpret their own mental statesF
This paper aims to study children’s understanding that pretend emotions might be different from real emotions, and that an observer of a pretend emotion can be misled about the real emotion of the pretender
Our first research question was: do children understand the pretence-reality distinction in the case of emotions? The results strongly suggest that the majority of children aged four understand that pretend emotions are not real, regardless of whether the pretender is another person or themselves

Summary

Introduction

The Theory of Mind (ToM) is considered as a crucial ability for children’s social development, as it allows them to perceive and interpret their own mental states. (beliefs, desires, emotions, thoughts, intentions...) and those of others (Flavell 2004; Peterson and Wellman 2009). Children develop this capacity to understand mental states gradually, as they acquire multiple concepts (Wellman and Liu 2004). Around the age of three and four, children start realizing that people’s behavior depend on their desires and beliefs about reality (Adrián et al 2006). From the age of five, children learn that people’s emotions depend on their desires and beliefs (Harris 2008).

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