A hierarchy of information sources for inferring emotional reactions

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Abstract

The ability of children and adults to infer emotional reactions from different sources of information was investigated. Preschoolers (mean age, 4–9), second graders (mean age, 4–9), and college students were asked to infer emotional reactions from verbally presented stories in which sources of information occurred either singly, in conflict, or in congruence. The sources investigated were situational (the protagonist's social or physical situation), normative (the dispositions of a group to which the protagonist belongs), and personal (the dispositions of the protagonist in particular). Subjects indicated the protagonist's emotional reaction to an event in the story by choosing one of three facial expressions, representing happy, upset, and afraid. A hierarchy of sources for making emotional inferences was found at all three grade levels: personal information was preferred over normative information, and both were dominant over situational information. The relevance of present methods and findings to the study of the development of “empathy” is discussed.

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This research was supported by a National Institute of Mental Health Traineeship (3 T01 MH06668) to J. Gnepp, through the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota and a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Traineeship (HD-00098) to J. Klayman, through the Center for Research in Human Learning, University of Minnesota. Additional funding was provided by National Institute of Education Grant NIE-G-77-0018 to T. Trabasso, by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development program project grants to the Institute of Child Development (5 P01 HD05027) and to the Center for Research in Human Learning (HD01136), and by a grant from the National Science Foundation to the Center (HB-17590). In addition, T. Trabasso was supported as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Reading, University of Illinois, by the National Institute of Education under Contract US-NIE-C-400-76-0016.

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