Young Children's Evaluation of Negative Situations and the Intensity of Their Emotional Reaction: A Comparison between the Evaluation of Damage to Self and to Others

Abstract

The present study investigated young children's assessments of intention and degree of damage inflicted in the hypothetical situation in which the target of an aggressive act was either the child her/himself or a stranger. A total of 56 children, 4- to 6-year-olds, participated in the study. They evaluated the intention of the agent, the difficulty of the situation, the target's ability to cope with the situation, and the intensity of the negative emotions of the target in two conditions: the self-target condition and the other-target condition. The results showed that children evaluated the agent's intention more favorably in the self-target condition than in the other-target condition in cases where they evaluated the other-target condition first, followed by the self-target condition. In addition, they evaluated the target's ability to cope more favorably, the situation as less difficult, and the intensity of the negative emotional experience as weaker in the self-target condition than in the other-target condition. These results suggested a relationship between the children's evaluations of the situations and their emotional inferences.