Acta Psychologica Sinica

Abstract

Ninety 3–5-year-olds’ emotion cognition toward protagonists with positive or negative behavior was examined under four everyday situations having different association with emotions. Results showed that: 1) Most preschoolers could understand that the protagonists with positive behavior would feel happy; 2) Their cognition toward negative emotions was some poorer, developed rapidly between 3 and 4 years old and then reached the full understanding. Particularly in the situations lowly associated with emotion, this understanding was even poorer and significantly worse than their cognition toward negative emotions in situations highly associated with emotion. 3) About 60% of the 3-year-olds could understand that individuals with different behaviors under the same situations would feel differently. Such affective perspective taking ability reached the highest level at 4 and 5-year-olds. 4) Preschoolers’ emotion justifications changed with polarity of emotion and situations.

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