Cultural Emotional Biases are Reflected in Adult Perceptions of Children’s Emotions

• In Event: New Directions in Studying Adult and Children’s Emotion Knowledge

Abstract

Introduction. Understanding children’s emotions is increasingly recognized as a dynamic process that involves not just what children reveal in their facial expressions but what adults think they might be feeling (Barrett et al., 2019). Individuals’ beliefs and biases also contribute to perceivers’ assessments, ultimately creating serious consequences for the children being judged. Yet the stability of adults’ accuracy of emotion recognition is not much greater than the stability of their errors (Halberstadt et al., 2021), suggesting the importance of examining consistent bias in interpreting children’s emotions. Initial evidence has supported theoretical propositions that adults are more likely to perceive anger in Black compared to White persons’ faces even when no anger is present in those faces (Cooke & Halberstadt, 2021; Halberstadt et al., 2022; Hugenberg & Bodenhausen, 2004). This presentation supplements previous work with a much larger sample with which to additionally explore whether other systematic biases emerge in adult observers’ judgments of children’s facial expressions. Because gender differences in expression of both sadness and happiness have been posited, particularly among White populations (Chaplin & Aldao, 2013), we assessed gender X race interactions as well as main effects in this larger sample, and for all six emotions. Method. Participants were 476 undergraduates in psychology (46.6 %), elementary education majors (37.2%), or full-time teachers (11.1%). Participants completed the PerCEIVED Task (Halberstadt et al., 2020, Halberstadt et al., 2021) comprised of the faces of 72 child actors (9 to 13 years old) dynamically expressing one of six emotions (happy, angry, sad, fearful, disgusted, surprised), with representation for each emotion completely balanced by race (Black, White) and gender (female, male). Faces were FACS-coded to ensure that the faces utilized musculature for only the one emotion requested. Results. Multilevel modeling was selected to allow within-person assessments of participants’ perception of emotion by race, gender, and emotion, and to control for learning effects across the three rounds of the measure (the effect of round is included in each model). We assessed biases in emotion perceptions for sad, fear, happy, surprise, and disgust (anger bias has previously been reported). Table 4.1 demonstrates significant main effects or interactions for all emotion biases. Briefly, main effects for race and gender indicate that Black children were more likely to be misperceived as sad, happy, and disgusted and White children as fearful and surprised; girls were more likely to be misperceived as disgusted and males as fearful, happy, and surprised. The interactions, however, indicate the intersectionality of adult misperceptions of children’s emotions. Discussion. Findings demonstrate adult biases about facial expressions of Black vs White children and girls vs boys, regardless of what expressions children are actually revealing. Implications of imposing these biases on children in myriad settings from school settings to policed environments will be discussed, including how these biased interpretations may create the very emotionally-laden experiences that adults falsely imagine.

Authors

• Alison N Cooke, Duke University
  Presenting Author

• Amy Halberstadt, North Carolina State University

• Xi Liu, North carolina state university

• Pamela Watkins Garner, George Mason University