Children's Self-Awareness of Negative Emotion Expression in Peer Interaction

Julie A. Hubbard and John D. Coie

Duke University

A growing body of evidence suggests that at least two distinct behavioral subgroups of rejected children exist: aggressive and nonaggressive (Cillessen, Van IJzendoorn, Van Lieshout, & Hartup, 1992). It is becoming clear that these subgroups of rejected children do not experience rejection in the same way. Nonaggressive rejected children report greater feelings of loneliness and social dissatisfaction and have lower self-esteem than either aggressive rejected or average status children. Alternatively, aggressive rejected children are no more lonely or socially dissatisfied than average status children and have at least average levels of self-esteem (Parkhurst & Asher, 1992; Boivin & Begin, 1989).

Zakriski and Coie (1993) hypothesized that these differences between aggressive rejected and nonaggressive rejected children could be explained by differences in children's awareness of their rejected social status. In their study, children were asked to predict which classmates liked and disliked them at the same time that they completed standard sociometric items. Nonaggressive rejected children were aware of their own low status with peers, while aggressive rejected children were not. Zakriski and Coie (1993) then hypothesized that aggressive rejected children may be unaware of their rejected social status because of an inability to perceive negative feedback from peers. This hypothesis was tested in a study in which children participated in a game-playing situation with a confederate who had been trained to deliver negative feedback. Nonaggressive rejected children perceived this feedback accurately, while aggressive rejected children did not.

In the current paper, a second hypothesis for rejected aggressive children's lack of awareness of their low social status is offered. It is hypothesized that aggressive rejected children are less aware than other children of their own display of behavior associated with peer rejection. The particular behavior focused on in this study is negative emotion expression, which has been linked to peer rejection in previous work (Hubbard & Coie, in press).

Participants were 120 second-grade African-American children. Sociometric data and classroom peer nominations of aggressive behavior were collected. Children were equally divided between rejected and average sociometric status, between children nominated by peers as aggressive and nonaggressive, and between boys and girls.

Children's awareness of their negative emotion expression was examined using a paradigm in which subjects interacted with same-age, same-sex confederates in a videotaped game-playing situation. Interactions were designed to evoke emotional arousal (losing a game and a prize, playing with a child who cheats). Following each game, subjects were asked whether or not they believed that they expressed negative emotion through their face, their vocal intonation, or other behaviors (Did your face look mad/sad?; Did your voice sound mad/sad?; Did you do other things that would let someone know that you were mad/sad?).

Actual emotional expression was assessed with three coding schemes. Using a facial coding scheme, observers recorded on a continuous time basis whether a subject's face displayed a happy, sad, angry, or neutral expression. Using a verbal intonation coding scheme, observers recorded for each of a subject's verbalizations whether intonation was happy, sad, angry, or neutral. Using a nonverbal emotional expression coding scheme, observers recorded the occurrence of other behaviors that indicated the display of emotion (aggression, crying, stomping, sighing, etc.).

Analyses will focus on the disparity between children's observed and reported expression of negative emotion. Since aggressive rejected children are hypothesized both to express more negative emotion and to be less aware of their negative emotion expression than other children, it is predicted that they will have the greatest discrepancy between observed and reported measurements of negative emotion expression.