Children's Understandings of Emotions and Self: Are There Gender Differences?

Abstract

This study explored gendered relations between children's self-perceptions and emotion understanding. Ninety-one children (52 girls, 39 boys; 5–8 years) completed self-report self-perception measures and participated in individual interviews to assess three dimensions of self-understanding (continuity, agency, distinctiveness) and emotion understanding. Significant negative correlations were found between both girls' and boys' physical self-concept and emotion understanding. Content analyses of interview responses showed that for both girls and boys, emotion understanding responses contained greater references to physical and behavioral terms, and their self-agency responses contained more references to the self than others. Positive relations between emotion understanding and self-understanding were significant for girls only. Results are discussed in terms of educational implications.