Student Study Guide
Chapter 5
Emotions: Thoughts about Feelings
Chapter Outline
WHAT ARE EMOTIONS?
WHY ARE EMOTIONS IMPORTANT?
PERSPECTIVES ON EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
LEARNING PERSPECTIVE
FUNCTIONAL PERSPECTIVE
DEVELOPMENT OF EMOTI ONS
Primary Emotions
Joy
Bet You Thought That . . . a Smile Is a Smile Is a Smile
Fear
Anger
Sadness
SECONDARY EMOTIONS
Pride and Shame
Jealousy
Guilt
Empathy
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN EMOTIONAL EXPRESSIVENESS
DEVELOPMENT OF EMOTIONAL UNDERSTANDING
RECOGNIZING EMOTIONS IN OTHERS
Cultural Context: Expressing and Understanding Emotions in Different Cultures
BEYOND RECOGNITION: THINKING ABOUT EMOTIONS
Matching Emotions to Situations: Emotional Scripts
Multiple Emotions, Multiple Causes
EMOTION REGULATION
Into Adulthood: Controlling Negative Emotions in Adulthood
SOCIALIZATION OF EMOTION
SOCIALIZATION BY PARENTS
SOCIALIZATION BY OTHER CHILDREN
Research Up Close: Emotional Development in a High School Theater Program
SOCIALIZATION BY TEACHERS
Real-World Application: Teachers as Promoters of Emotional Competence
WHEN EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT GOES WRONG
Insights from Extremes: When Children Commit Suicide
CAUSES OF CHILDHOOD DEPRESSION
Biological Causes
Social Causes
Cognitive Causes
TREATING CHILDHOOD DEPRESSION
Chapter Summary
Key Terms
At the Movies
Development of Negative Emotions--Most movies about children’s emotions accentuate the
negative. For example, 12 and Holding (2005) portrays the raw, unguarded emotions of pain,
longing, rage, and revenge in troubled children entering adolescence and conveys how these
lonely, insecure children became so consumed by their feelings that they lost sight of ordinary
social boundaries. A child’s emotions are also at the heart of the film Atonement (2007), so
named because a girl’s false accusation of her older sister, consequent feelings of guilt, and
attempts to atone for her actions are central to the plot. Poignant portrayals of negative emotions
in childhood are often found in movies about divorce. For example, in Shoot the Moon (1982),
the oldest daughter is mature enough to see what is happening when her parents split up but too
immature to handle the aftermath. She doesn’t know whether to love or hate her father for
leaving the family and angrily refuses to forgive him.
Socialization of Emotions--Some movies provide an opportunity for teaching children how to
deal with negative emotions. These include blockbusters such as The Incredible Hulk (2008),
which graphically illustrates what happens when a man (who happens to have been exposed to
gamma rays) is under emotional stress and fills with rage: He turns into a destructive, murderous,
giant green monster. The movie also shows how the Hulk learned to control his emotions
through meditation and love. In addition to popular movies like The Incredible Hulk, numerous
educational films focus on children’s emotions, such as LarryBoy and the Angry Eyebrows
(2002), in which the lesson of letting go of anger is conveyed by the superhero alter ego of Larry
the Cucumber from VeggieTales; Live & Learn: Dealing with Anger (2008), in which children
learn different approaches to handling their anger when their expectations aren’t met; Dragon
Tales: Whenever I’m Afraid (2004), in which stories about overcoming fear offer help for
anxious children; and Trevor Romain: Taking the “Duh” Out of Divorce (2008), in which an
animated character is helped to work through anger, fear, and sadness when her parents
announce their divorce.
Autistic Children and Emotions--The Transporters (2007) teaches autistic children how to
recognize emotions such as anger and sadness through the exploits of vehicles including a train,
a ferry, and a cable car. This film is the brainchild of Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism
Research Centre at Cambridge University. He and his colleagues have shown that when autistic
children between the ages of 4 and 7 years watch the video for at least 15 minutes a day for one
month, they catch up with normal children in their ability to identify emotions.
Learning from Living Leaders: Chapter 5 Emotions: Thoughts About Feelings
Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis is Professor of Pediatrics and Psychology and Director of the Institute for the
Study of Child Development at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Rutgers University.
After excursions into engineering, sociology, and market research, Lewis received a Ph.D. in
experimental and clinical psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. An early interest in
how the lack of social contact alters children’s social needs led to a lifelong career studying
children’s social development.
During this career, Lewis has tried to understand the nature of children’s social
relationships with family members, peers, and friends. His proudest accomplishments include his
work on secondary emotions such as pride, embarrassment, shame, and guilt. His book Shame,
the Exposed Self was an influential effort to broaden the range of emotions that developmental
psychologists study. Lewis hopes that the field of social development will expand understanding
of the links among emotions, social cognition, and the self and will use advances in research on
clinical problems, such as autism, to provide insights into social and emotional development.
Lewis is a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. In 2008, he
received the Urie Bronfenbrenner award for lifetime contributions to developmental psychology
from the American Psychological Association. He advises undergraduates to remember that
development is affected by accidents, chance encounters, effort, and luck. There is always hope
for the future!
Further Reading
Lewis, M. (2013). The rise of consciousness and the development of emotional life (2nd ed.).
New York: Guilford Press.
Learning from Living Leaders: Chapter 5 Emotions: Thoughts About Feelings
Carolyn Saarni
Carolyn Saarni earned a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley with a specialty in
developmental psychology and then received postdoctoral training in clinical psychology. Since
1980, she has been Professor in the Graduate Department of Counseling at Sonoma State
University, where she trains prospective marriage and family therapists and school counselors.
Saarni was one of the first researchers to examine the development of emotional display rules,
which she did by studying children’s reactions when they were given a “disappointing gift.” She
has coedited a number of publications including Lying and Deception in Everyday Life and
Children’s Understanding of Emotion. She also wrote The Development of Emotional Competence,
which describes specific skills that make up emotional competence. Saarni has given talks in many
countries including Germany, Japan, and China. Most recently, she was a visiting scholar in the
Languages of Emotion Cluster at the Free University of Berlin. In recognition of her excellent
teaching, she was awarded the Outstanding Professor Award from Sonoma State University.
Further Reading
Saarni, C., Campos, J., Camras, L., & Witherington, D. (2008). Principles of emotion and emotional
competence. In W. Damon & R. Lerner (Eds.), Child and adolescent development: An advanced
course (pp. 361–405). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Learning from Living Leaders: Chapter 5 Emotions: Thoughts About Feelings
Susanne A. Denham
Susanne Denham is Professor at George Mason University and an expert on children’s early
emotional development. Although she set out to be a pediatrician, she became a developmental
psychologist instead after changing her major and completing graduate work at the University of
Maryland. She traces her interest in understanding and helping young children to an early age
when she was fascinated by infant toys, often worked as a babysitter, and suffered through her
mother’s struggle with depression.
Her work has focused on three questions: How do parents teach their children to express,
regulate, and understand their emotions? How does knowing how to deal with feelings promote
children’s competence with their peers? How can we create and improve measures of children’s
social-emotional competence? Researchers and students all over the world have used her puppetbased Affect Knowledge Test. Her work has had applied value too: She has designed a program
to improve preschoolers’ emotional competence and created an assessment of emotional
competence that teachers can use.
Looking to the future, she sees more integration of emotional development work with
brain science and psychophysiological measurement, more applications that are based on
developmental science, and a move toward findings being taken seriously by policy makers. She
will be pursuing her new interest in the development of forgiveness in children. Her advice to
students: “Listen and watch kids! Follow your passion for understanding children. Let it
condense into a focus and don’t be afraid to continue your studies.”
Further Reading
Denham, S. A., Warren, H., von Salisch, M., Benga, O., Chin, J.-C., & Geangu, E. (2011).
Emotions and social development in childhood. In P. K. Smith & C. H. Hart (Eds.), WileyBlackwell handbook of childhood social development (2nd ed., pp 413–433). Oxford, UK:
Wiley-Blackwell
Learning Objectives
1. Define what emotions are, specifically primary and secondary emotions.
2. Explain why emotions are important.
3. Understand the different perspectives on emotional development (biological, learning,
functional).
4. Describe the development of primary and secondary emotions.
5. Explain the difference between reflex and social smiles. Define Duchenne smile and explain
when it is more likely to be displayed.
6. Describe stranger distress or fear of strangers, when in development it emerges, and what
factors might affect its display.
7. Explain what social referencing is and the role it plays in emotional development.
8. Describe other common fears (e.g., separation anxiety, fear of heights) and explain how
cognitive development contributes to fear.
9. Discuss the development of secondary emotions. Give examples and trace the development
of a secondary emotion
10. Describe individual differences in emotional expressiveness.
11. Explain why recognizing others’ emotion is important and how it develops.
12. Define emotional script and describe the development of emotional scripts.
13. Describe how the understanding of multiple emotions and causes develops.
14. Define emotion regulation, explain how it develops and its significance for development of
social competence
15. Describe the model of emotional socialization.
16. Describe how parents, other children, and teachers contribute to the socialization of emotion.
17. Discuss childhood depression including incidence, differences across gender, and links to
suicide.
18. Understand the biological, cognitive and social causes of depression.
19. Describe cognitive behavior therapy for treating depression.
Student Handout 5-1
Chapter Summary
What are Emotions?
Why Are Emotions Important?
 Children communicate their feelings, needs, and wishes to others and regulate other people’s
behavior through emotional expressions
Perspectives on Emotional Development
 Biological, learning, and functional theories explain different aspects of emotional
development
Development of Emotions
 Babies begin expressing primary emotions of anger, joy, fear, and sadness early in life.
 Smiling begins with the newborn’s reflex smile, which depends on the baby’s internal state.
Social smiles appear between 3 and 8 weeks. By 12 weeks, infants smile selectively at
familiar faces and voices, depending on the situation. By 4 months, infants begin to laugh.
Both laughter and smiling express joy and play a critical role in maintaining the proximity of
the caregiver to the baby.
 Fear emerges gradually in the first year. Babies tend to be less fearful in a familiar setting
and when they feel as if they have some control over the situation. Social referencing helps
them know how to behave in unfamiliar situations.
 In the second year, children develop secondary or self-conscious emotions such as pride,
shame, guilt, jealousy, and empathy. These emotions rely on the development of selfawareness.
Individual Differences in Emotional Expressiveness
 Differences in emotional expressiveness are rooted in biology and have important
implications for children’s later adjustment.
Development of Emotional Understanding
 In the first 6 months of life, infants begin to recognize emotional expressions in other people.
They typically recognize positive emotions before negative ones, which has functional value
because it strengthens the infants’ bond with caregivers.
 As children mature, they develop an understanding of emotion terms. Emotional scripts help
them identify the feelings that typically accompany particular situations. They learn that
people can experience more than one emotion at a time and two emotions may conflict.
Emotion Regulation
 A major challenge for children is to learn how to modify, control, and regulate emotions so
they are less frequent and less intense.

By the preschool years, children begin to follow emotional display rules that dictate which
emotions to show under what circumstances. Culture affects these rules, and the display of
such emotions as anger and shame may be sanctioned in one culture but disapproved of in
another.
Socialization of Emotion
 Parents influence children’s emotional expressions, understanding, and regulation. They
serve as models for emotional displays and by reacting to the child’s emotional expressions
encourage or discourage such displays. Children whose parents serve as coaches in helping
them understand and manage their emotions are better able to handle emotional upset on their
own and are more accepted by their peers. Belittling or dismissing children’s emotions or
punishing children for their expression may prevent children from learning how to manage
their own feelings and understand other people’s emotions.
 Peers and teachers also play a role in the socialization of children’s emotions.
When Emotional Development Goes Wrong
 Children sometimes experience extreme anger, fear, phobias, anxiety, or depression.
 The prevalence of depression increases in adolescence and is higher in girls than boys. In
extreme cases, suicide sometimes occurs, especially among some minority groups.
 Biological, social, and cognitive factors are all potential contributors to the development of
depression. Medications, cognitive therapy, and prevention programs are ways of treating
child and adolescent depression.
Student Handout 5-2
Key Terms
GLOSSARY TERMS
childhood depression
A mood disorder often manifested in
despondent mood and loss of interest in
familiar activities but possibly expressed as
irritability and crankiness and difficulty
concentrating or focusing on tasks.
cognitive behavior therapy
A therapy technique useful for treating
depression in adolescents that teaches
strategies for dealing with depressive moods
and acquiring a more positive outlook.
Duchenne smile
A smile reflecting genuine pleasure, shown in
crinkles around the eyes as well as an upturned
mouth.
emotion regulation
The managing, monitoring, evaluating, and
modifying of emotional reactions to reduce the
intensity and duration of emotional arousal.
emotional display rule
An implicit understanding in a culture of how
and when an emotion should be expressed.
emotional script
A scheme that enables a child to identify the
emotional reaction likely to accompany a
particular event.
empathy
A shared emotional response that parallels
another person’s feelings.
learned helplessness
A feeling that results from the belief that one
cannot control the events in one’s world.
primary emotions
Fear, joy, disgust, surprise, sadness, and
interest, which emerge early in life and do not
require introspection or self-reflection.
reflex smile
An upturned mouth seen in the newborn that is
usually spontaneous and appears to depend on
some internal stimulus rather than on
something external such as another person’s
behavior.
secondary or self-conscious emotions
Pride, shame, guilt, jealousy, embarrassment,
and empathy, which emerge in the second year
of life and depend on a sense of self and the
awareness of other people’s reactions.
separation anxiety
Fear of being apart from the familiar caregiver
(usually the mother or father) which typically
peaks at about 15 months of age.
social referencing
The process of “reading” emotional cues in
others to help determine how to act in an
uncertain situation.
social smile
An upturned mouth in response to a human
face or voice, which first occurs when the
infant is about 2 months old
stranger distress or fear of strangers
A negative emotional reaction to unfamiliar
people, which typically emerges in infants
around the age of 9 months.
OTHER IMPORTANT TERMS IN THIS CHAPTER
Duplay smile
egocentric empathic distress
emotion coaching
emotional competence
emotional expressiveness
learned helplessness
Max Emotion Coding System
mixed emotions
play smile
quasi-egocentric empathic distress
rudimentary empathic responding
self-conscious emotions
simple smile
socioemotional selectivity theory
social signaling system
true empathic distress
visual cliff
Practice Exam Questions
Answers are given at the end of the questions. Pages in the text relating to each question are
given in parentheses () at the end of the question.
MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
1. Which of the following emotions typically emerges first: (a) pride (b) sadness (c) jealousy (d)
guilt (130,139)
2. Secondary emotions: (a) emerge in infancy (b) do not require introspection to emerge (c)
depend on an awareness of others’ reactions (d) do not require a sense of self (127)
3. Emotional expressions: (a) are culture specific (b) involve an objective reaction to something in
the environment (c) are generally accompanied by physiological arousal (d) are evident only in
the second half of the first year (126)
4. Babies smile more at familiar faces than unfamiliar ones at about: (a) 1 year (b) 9 months (c) 6
months (d) 3 months (131)
5. The process of reading emotional cues in others to help determine how to act in an uncertain
situation is called: (a) using emotional display rules (b) following an emotional script (c)
experiencing empathy (d) social referencing (134)
6. By the time children are 3 years old, solving a problem that is not particularly difficult elicits
______, but succeeding on a difficult task produces ______: (a) joy, sadness (b) joy, anxiety (c)
joy, pride (d) joy, guilt (136)
7. Cross-cultural research on the timetable of emotional recognition suggests that: (a) compared
with children from the U.S., Japanese preschool children are faster at recognizing negative
emotions (e.g., anger) and positive emotions (e.g., joy) (b) compared with children from the
U.S., Japanese preschool children are faster at recognizing negative emotions (e.g., anger) (c)
compared with children from the U.S., Japanese preschool children are faster at recognizing
positive emotions (e.g., joy) (d) children from different cultures follow a similar timetable for
recognizing basic emotions (140)
8. The process of monitoring, managing, and modifying emotional reactions to reduce the
intensity and duration of emotional arousal is known as: (a) following an emotional script (b)
expressing a secondary emotion (c) knowing emotional display rules (d) emotional regulation
(142)
9. Compared with younger adults, older adults: (a) distort their memories to make them more
emotionally gratifying (b) experience fewer negative emotions (c) are less likely to confront
their emotions (d) all of the above (144)
10. If parents are positive and provide comfort when interacting with their children, the children
are more likely to: (a) know how emotions should be displayed (b) develop constructive
reactions to anger (c) regulate their emotions better (d) all of the above (144-145)
11. The PATHS Head Start curriculum designed to facilitate children’s emotional competence
shows success at: (a) increasing emotional vocabulary (b) reducing aggression and attention
problems at home (c) increasing reading skills (d) a and b but not c (148)
ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. How is emotional regulation expressed in infancy and in preschool? (142-143)
2. Discuss the role of social referencing in social development and describe how it changes with
development. (134)
3. Give three reasons that emotions are important for children’s social development. (127)
Multiple choice answers: bccddcdddda