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Aspects of 72 preschoolers' display rule knowledge - the ability to distinguish apparent from real emotions and understand the motives underlying display rule use - were examined. Children listened to stories describing situations designed to elicit an emotion in the protagonist and a prosocial or self-protective reason for concealing her/his real emotion from other story characters. Children were asked to predict what facial expressions the protagonists would display in response to the emotionally laden situations and to justify their predictions. Findings revealed that children's ability to distinguish between apparent and real emotions increased in the 4-6 years age span. Moreover, children justified prosocial and self-protective display rules with similar accuracy. The findings are discussed in terms of children's ability to make the appearance-reality distinction across domains (emotional, physical) and in the context of the socialization of emotional displays.
Keywords: Appearance-reality distinction, display rules, emotion, protagonist, apparent, real.
A widely held assumption is that emotions have, in their expression, a communicative function (Ekman, 1997). They constitute a language that effectively signals to others one's emotional state. One of the underlying grammars of this language is a set of culture-specific principles for emotional expression. These principles, which are collectively known as display rules (Ekman & Friesen, 1975), dictate when, where and with whom it is appropriate to display a given emotion.
Over the last 20 years, numerous studies have examined the development of children's ability to use display rules (Cole, 1986; Josephs, 1994; Saarni, 1984; Zeman & Garber, 1996). In contrast, little empirical attention has been devoted to children's understanding of these rules for emotional expression. It has been suggested (Saarni, 1999) that knowledge of display rules includes two important components: (1) knowledge of the distinction between apparent and real emotions, and (2) understanding of the motives underlying display rule use. The purpose of the present study was to examine the development of these aspects of display rule knowledge in the preschool years.
DISTINGUISHING APPARENT FROM REAL EMOTIONS
The distinction between apparent and real emotions refers to an individual's ability to understand that an outward expression (appearance) can be dissembled and thus it will not correspond to the emotion being felt subjectively (reality). Harris and his colleagues (Harris, Donnelly, Guz, & Pitt-Watson, 1986) were the pioneers...