Zajdel Ruth T, Bloom Jill Myerow, Fireman Gary, Larsen Jeff T
Suffolk University, Department of Psychology, 41 Temple Street, 6th Floor, Boston, MA 02114, USA.
J Genet Psychol. 2013 Sep-Dec;174(5-6):582-603. doi: 10.1080/00221325.2012.732125.
The present study examined the development of children's ability report understanding and experiencing allocentric mixed emotions, and explored the relation of gender and empathic ability to these skills. Participants (128 elementary school-aged children [63 boys, 65 girls]) were shown a movie clip with bittersweet themes to elicit mixed emotions. Findings from this study are consistent with prior research (Larsen, To, & Fireman, 2007), supporting a developmental progression in children's ability to both understand and report experiencing mixed emotions, with the two as distinct skills and children reporting understanding earlier than experiencing of emotions. Consistent with previous research, girls performed significantly better on the emotion experience task. Finally, results provided evidence that empathy partially mediates the relationship between age and reports of mixed emotion experience, but no evidence that empathy plays a role in mixed emotional understanding.
本研究考察了儿童理解和体验异我中心混合情绪的能力发展,并探讨了性别和共情能力与这些技能之间的关系。研究人员向参与者(128名小学适龄儿童[63名男孩,65名女孩])播放了一段带有苦乐参半主题的电影片段,以引发混合情绪。本研究的结果与先前的研究(拉森、托和法尔曼,2007年)一致,支持儿童理解和报告体验混合情绪的能力存在发展进程,这两种能力是不同的技能,且儿童报告理解情绪早于体验情绪。与先前的研究一致,女孩在情绪体验任务上的表现明显更好。最后,结果提供了证据表明,共情部分介导了年龄与混合情绪体验报告之间的关系,但没有证据表明共情在混合情绪理解中起作用。