Abstract
Children’s sulking behavior is a salient yet understudied emotional phenomenon. It has been hypothesized to result from hurt feelings, humiliation, and anger, and might thus function as a nonverbal measure in the behavioral studies of these emotions. We conducted three studies that served to develop a comprehensive coding system for children’s sulking behavior. The first study explored sulking features in an online survey that used parental and teacher reports. In an event-based parental diary study, we reevaluated the importance of each feature based on its frequency across episodes of sulking behavior and analyzed the time course of sulking episodes. Finally, we analyzed YouTube videos and demonstrated that the coding system could be reliably applied. We also determined a minimal number of necessary features as a classification threshold. The resulting coding system includes the following features: becoming silent, distancing, turning away, gaze avoidance, crossing arms, lowering head, pouting lips, lowered eyebrows, and, probably, utterances of illegitimate devaluation, and relational distancing. Thus, all varieties of sulking seem to have withdrawal from an ongoing interaction in common.
Highlights
IntroductionWe observed the following interaction: Two 4-year-old friends, F. and M. are playing with a toy car
In a preschool class, we observed the following interaction: Two 4-year-old friends, F. and M. are playing with a toy car
We use sulking as referring to a behavioral category and pouting as referring to a facial expression that typically occurs as part of sulking behavior
Summary
We observed the following interaction: Two 4-year-old friends, F. and M. are playing with a toy car. F., who is about to lose the conflict, crosses his arms. He walks away from M. but does not begin a new activity. M. gives F. the toy, and F. resumes playing with M. This interaction is puzzling: Without words and without physical force, one child (F.) influences another child (M.) to hand over a beloved toy. 68) and threatens to sever a bond This threat might “give rise to efforts toward bond repair” Threats of withdrawal of affection provide us with a paradox as they seem to be used by individuals who feel dependent or are in a less powerful role than the “perpetrator” (Lazarus, 1991; Mendell, 2002). Sulking seems to involve bluffing in some sense because breaking up the relationship would lead to negative consequences for the sulking individual
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