Promoting Children's Understanding of the Situations, Thoughts, and Prosocial Responses Related to Jealousy

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: Children's Social and Emotional Adjustment

Abstract

The present study investigated the effects of emotion trainings on 5- to 8-year-old children’s knowledge of jealousy. Participants were 53 children (M = 83.68 months, SD = 5.59 months) recruited from two public elementary schools. Children were assigned either to one of two experimental emotion-training conditions (i.e., video-only or video and role play) or a non-intervention control condition. Only children in the experimental conditions made significant gains in their knowledge of jealousy. The video and role play training was most effective at improving children’s knowledge about jealousy-eliciting situations, while both types of training were equally effective at helping children understand prosocial ways of responding to jealousy-eliciting situations. Children had the most difficulty understanding thoughts characteristic of jealousy.

Authors

• Patrick Pieng, California State University - Sacramento

• Yukari Okamoto, University of California - Santa Barbara