Gender and Preschoolers' Perception of Emotion

A person's gender plays a role in the emotion children attribute to that person, even given unambiguous cues to a basic emotion. Eighty preschoolers (4 or 5 years of age) were asked to name the emotion of either a boy (Judd) or a girl (Suzy) in otherwise identical stories about prototypical emotional events and, separately, as shown with identical prototypical facial expressions. Boys more often labeled Judd than Suzy as disgusted, both in the disgust story and with the disgust face. There was also a trend for girls to label Suzy as afraid more often than Judd, both in the fear story and with the fear face.