Relieved or disappointed? Children’s understanding of how others feel at the cessation of events

Matthew Johnston, Teresa McCormack, Sara Lorimer, Bethany Corbett, Sarah Beck, Christoph Hoerl, Aidan Feeney

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Abstract

People’s emotional states are influenced not just by events occurring in the present but also by how events have unfolded in the past and how they are likely to unfold in the future. To what extent do young children understand the ways in which past events can affect current emotions even if they are no longer ongoing? In the current study, we explored children’s ability to understand how others feel at the cessation of events—as events change from being present to being past. We asked 97 4- to 6-year-olds (40.2% female) and 35 adults (54.3% female) to judge how characters felt once particular types of events had ended relative to how they felt during these events. We found that from age 4, children judged (as adults do) that the character would feel positive at the cessation of negative events—what we refer to as temporal relief. This understanding of relief occurs earlier than has been shown in previous research. However, children were less likely than adults to judge others as feeling sad at the cessation of positive events—what we refer to as temporal disappointment. Overall, our findings suggest that children not only understand that the cessation of events can affect others’ emotions but also recognize that people feel differently following the cessation of positive, negative, and neutral events.
Original languageEnglish
Article number106016
Pages (from-to)1-20
Number of pages20
JournalJournal of Experimental Child Psychology
Volume246
Early online date22 Jul 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished online - 22 Jul 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors

Data Access Statement

Images and exact wording of the study vignettes are available in the online supplementary material. Data, analysis code, and OpenSesame files are available on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/38qhj/view_only=3291c31b9182481ca84463c7af56e5bf).

Keywords

  • Emotion
  • Development
  • Social cognition
  • Temporal cognition
  • Time
  • Relief
  • Disappointment

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