Romanian Children’s Representations of Negative and Self-Conscious Emotions in a Narrative Story Stem Technique

Loredana Apavaloaie,Loren D Marks,Timothy Page

doi:10.5964/ejop.v10i2.704

Loredana Apavaloaie, Loren D Marks + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v10i2.704

Copy DOI

Abstract

This research uses children’s story-stem play narratives to investigate dimensions of negative emotional expression. Fifty-one Romanian children between 6 and 11-years old participated in the study. Children’s narratives were coded for three basic negative emotions and five self-conscious emotions. Parents completed a general questionnaire for demographic data and the amount of time they spent with their children. Differences were found for frequencies of negative emotional representations in relation to the specific story-stems in which they occurred. Girls were more likely than boys to enact in their narratives guilt feelings coupled with apology following some wrongdoing. Children who spent more time with parents enacted significantly less anger and fear. Simultaneous expressions of multiple negative emotions were observed in the narrative responses of these middle childhood-aged Romanian children. While findings should be viewed with caution, owing to the small and homogeneous sample, new directions for future research with this assessment method are indicated.

Highlights

Young children’s experience and expression of specific negative emotions have been a growing focus in the developmental psychological literature
In terms of the specific stories that elicited the greatest number of specific negative emotions, the Uncle Peter story (26 occurrences) elicited the most representations of sadness
The basic negative emotion variables, anger, fear, and sadness, were intercorrelated; these were, the strongest found, suggesting a qualitative difference between this group of emotions compared to the others

Summary

Introduction

Young children’s experience and expression of specific negative emotions have been a growing focus in the developmental psychological literature. Basic Negative Emotions Paul Ekman, one of the most influential researchers in the field of emotional facial expression and the theory of basic negative emotions, has identified three specific negative emotions, called primary aversive emotions, anger, fear, and sadness (Ekman, 1992, 1999) These are expressed universally in all humans via facial expressions, regardless of race, culture, sex, ethnicity, or national origin (Ekman, 2003). Basic negative emotions appear within the first nine months of life (Campos, Barrett, Lamb, Goldsmith, & Stenberg, 1983) They have a significant role in children’s social development (Izard, 1992) in that understanding their expression is always dependent on the social relational contexts in which they occur. Long-standing dysregulated emotion may be evidence of persistent problematic interactions with caregivers

Methods

Results

Conclusion