Tears for girls and teeth for boys: the influence of gender on children’s depiction of sadness and anger in their drawings

Abstract

Up to now, very few studies investigated the influence of gender on the depiction of emotions in children’s drawings. However, the literature on emotions reveals differences between boys and girls in various kinds of tasks (e.g. recognising emotional facial expressions, understanding an emotional situation, etc.). Therefore, we examined the impact of gender on the depiction of sadness and anger. We took into account children’s gender but also the gender of the character expressing the target emotion. Forty-four boys and forty-seven girls aged 7–8 and thirty-six boys and fifty-three girls aged 9–10 were asked to listen to stories where the main character (either a male or a female) was feeling sad or angry and then to draw the facial cues corresponding to the target emotion. Two methods were used to rate the drawings: judges assessed the correct vs. incorrect depiction of the two target emotions and a content analysis was then conducted on the correct drawings so as to reveal the type of facial cues used by children. By showing the major influence of children’s gender on their depiction of sadness and anger, our findings offer promising lines of research in educational and clinical settings.

Keywords:

• Drawing
• emotions
• gender
• children