An Observational Study of Children's Attempts to Monitor Their Expressive Behavior

Author(s): Carolyn Saarni

Source: Child Development, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Aug., 1984), pp. 1504-1513
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Society for Research in Child Development
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An Observational Study of Children's Attempts

to Monitor Their Expressive Behavior
CarolynSaarni
Sonoma State University
An Observational Study of Children's Attempts to Monitor Their Expressive
SAARNI,CAROLYN.

Behavior. CHILDDEVELOPMENT,
1984, 55, 1504-1513. This observationalstudy examined developmental patterns in children's attempts to regulate their expressive behavior in a mildly conflictful situation that was contrived by creating expectations in children for receiving a desirable
reward but in fact receiving an undesirable one. This situation provided a limited sample of
children's expressive behavior when faced with an implied display rule: "Lookpleased, despite
receiving a disappointing gift."Videotapes of the children's expressive behaviorwere analyzed,
and the majorfindings included significantage x sex interactionswherein the youngest children
(especially boys) were more likely to show negative behavior on receiving an undesirable gift
(i.e., a drab baby toy), while the older children (especially girls) were more likely to maintain
their positive expressive behavior. The results are discussed in terms of developmental differences in (a) awareness of social rules for management of expressive behavior, (b) ability to
implement the rule, and (c) motivation to carryout the rule.
When facial expressions are intentionally controlled so that one presents an altered
facial expression (instead of the expression
that would have revealed what one was really
feeling), we speak of the influence of display
rules on one's affective-expressive behavior
(Ekman, Friesen, & Ellsworth, 1972). Display rules govern the appropriateness of expressive behavior; they are presumably
learned in childhood and are used to regulate
or manage one's affective-expressive
behavior. Display rules may be either culturally
determined or idiosyncratic in origin; that is,
they may represent social conventions or
unique coping responses to expressive behavior management in assorted situations. We
take for granted that all normal adults are
capable of controlling their expressive behavior in assorted situations (see Ekman &
Friesen, 1975). The implication here is that
adults are aware of how their expressive behavior will be perceived by others, and they
will attempt to modify it if they wish to create
a particular sort of impression (see also the
sociological consideration of this issue-e.g.,
Goffman, 1972; Hochschild, 1979). However,
this skill at monitoring one's expressive behavior develops only gradually during childhood, being dependent on social-cognitive
development, fine muscle control, and individual experience.

Despite the apparent pervasiveness of

controlling our expressive behavior in daily
life, there is little systematic research on developmental trends in the acquisition of display rules. There are related studies on children's nonverbal deception and judgment
(e.g., DePaulo, Jordan, Irvine, & Laser, 1982;
Feldman, Jenkins, & Popoola, 1979; Krauss
& Morency, Note 1) and a few isolated studies on children's facial expressions that are
indirectly useful for studying regulation of
expressive behavior (e.g., facial expression
imitation and inhibition-Yarczower,
Kilbride, & Hill, 1979; incongruity of facial
& Cavey,
expression and situation-Burns
1957; Deutsch, 1974; lannotti, Note 2; Watson, Note 3; social status and facial behavior-Zivin, 1977; and children's implicit
theories of emotion and their relationship to
facial expression-Harris, Olthof, & Meerum
Terwogt, 1981). In my previous research,
children (age 6-10) demonstrated a steady
and significant increase in their application
of display rules to both photographed conflict
situations (Saarni, 1979) and to their own personal experience (Saarni, Note 4) as they became older. There was also an increase in
the complexity of reasons given for why emotional behavior should be managed or displayed in certain ways. Notably lacking in
the field, however, has been observational

This research was supported by a grantfrom the Spencer Foundation. I would like to thank
Mitch Wilson for his assistance in this study and the staff and children of the School of the
Madeleine, Berkeley, California,for their kind participation.Requests for reprintsshould be sent
to Carolyn Saarni,Department of Counseling, Sonoma State University, RohnertPark,California
94928.
[Child Development,1984,55, 1504-1513. ? 1984 by the Societyfor Researchin Child Development, Inc.
All rights reserved. 0009-3920/84/5504-0002$01.00]

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Carolyn Saarni

1505

research on children's spontaneous use of

display rules, which the present study has
sought to remedy.
A difficult problem in trying to record
children's spontaneous use of display rules
is that careful control over the situation is
required to have some assurance that children are in fact monitoring their facial
expressions and not simply expressing their
genuine feelings that merely differ from what
would be conventionally expected for that
situation. However, in this study a situation
was created that by its very contrivance increased the likelihood that children would
monitor their expressive behavior. The goal
in creating this situation was to be as credible
as possible to the children, with the resulting
sacrifice of some experimental precision. The
loss of credibility would have defeated the
purpose of this study in a considerably more
pervasive way than the limited loss of methodological control.

on receiving the baby toy without the influence of display rules to ameliorate their grimaces, swift departures from the room, omitted thank yous, and so on. Older children
were expected to show more positive expressive behavior relative to the younger
children on receiving the baby toy. Such positive behavior, despite presumed disappointment or confusion over the inappropriate gift,
was taken to be legitimate grounds for inferring use of self-regulation of expressive
behavior. It was also hypothesized that girls
would show more positive responses than
boys on receiving the inappropriate gift. The
rationale for this stems from two deception
studies in which girls were rated as being
more successful at dissembling than boys
(Feldman et al., 1979; Feldman & White,
1980). The dissemblance in these two studies was displaying a pleased, positive expression while drinking sour fruit juice, a task
that bears some similarity to the present
situation.

A common display rule in our culture is

"to look pleased and smile when someone
gives you something which they expect you
if you don't" (see Goffinan,
to like-even
1967). This display rule became the basis for
contriving the mildly conflictful situation. (In
addition, receiving a disappointing gift was
the theme for one of the conflict scenarios
used in an earlier study [Saarni, 1979], which
elicited a clear age difference in complexity
of reasons given for why expressive behavior
"should" be managed in such a situation.)
First, each child was given a desirable gift
on completing a task for the experimenter;
then each child returned a second time to
complete another task and received a second
gift for his or her effort in the task. This second gift was clearly undesirable-an obvious
and unimaginative baby toy. The first session
provided comparison data on how the children responded expressively to a desirable
gift (i.e., juice, candy, and 50 cents) and contributed to an expectancy for receiving something desirable at the second session. The
second session permitted observations of any
discrepancies from the first session in the
children's expressive behavior as they accepted the baby toy. For example, a child
may smile broadly, say "thank you" enthusiastically, and make smiling eye contact with
the experimenter in the first session, while
in the second the child may make less eye
contact, shrug, turn or tilt the head, mumble
"thank you," fidget, smile only slightly, and
so forth.

Since this study was limited to the observable behavior on the children's part, and
unobtrusive measures were not available to
determine what was actually going on in their
minds in the baby toy situation, the conclusions of this investigation remain inferential
and descriptive at best. However, as mentioned, earlier research on children's understanding of display rules in photographed
conflict situations had indicated that receiving a disappointing gift readily elicited from
8-10-year-olds both display rule reasoning
about controlling facial expression and articulate explanations of why one should do so,
for example, so as not to hurt the feelings of
the gift giver or to be thought of as rude or
impolite. Since such reasoning appears available to school-age children, this study's purpose was to taxonomize the expressive behaviors shown in a spontaneous situation by first-,
third-, and fifth-grade children. It should be
noted that, in the two Feldman et al. (1979,
1980) studies mentioned above, the children
were instructed to dissemble their response;
the present study's generalizability is to situations involving naturally occurring, spontaneous expressive behavior regulation.

Younger children were expected to show

directly their negative expressive behavior

Method
Sample
The sample consisted of 45 children: 14
first graders (mean age 6.9 years; six boys,
eight girls), 15 third graders (mean age 8.9
years; eight boys, seven girls), and 16 fifth
graders (mean age 10.8 years; eight boys,
eight girls). The subjects were native speakers

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1506

Child Development

of English, and socioeconomic status was

from middle to upper-middle class. Seven of
the 45 children were members of ethnic minority groups, relatively evenly distributed
across age and gender groups. Children
wearing eyeglasses were excluded because
of the difficulty in observing expressive
changes in the eye region on videotape. No
children with special educational needs were
included in the sample. The children attended an urban parochial school, and all had
parental permission to participate.
Procedure
All children were seen individually in
two separate sessions, described below. Both
sessions were videotaped. A video camera
was placed next to the experimenter and
across a 3-foot-wide table from the subject.
The zoom lens was used to tape the child's
face in close detail. A microphone simultaneously recorded all conversation. There was
no attempt to conceal the camera, for the
school prohibited concealed or secret videotaping; however, the subjects were first acquainted with the video equipment and allowed to experiment with seeing themselves
"on television." This was done partly to demystify "being on television" and also to satisfy their curiosity as to why they were being
taped.

workbook and evaluated its difficulty. They

were then told to take a gift out of a grabbag, containing gift-wrapped baby toys, which
were rather drab and unimaginative (e.g., a
pastel-colored plastic key on a ring). The baby
toy was also opened by the child in front of
the camera. Finally, at the end of the second
session the children were told that the baby
toy must have been a mistake. They were
then handed a set of colored felt-tip marking
pens (unwrapped) and were told that the pens
were their real gift. They were then asked
not to tell anyone about the baby toy "since
it wasn't their real gift anyway, but they could
show the pens to their classmates." At that
point many children (38%) said they did not
want to take the baby toy with them, and they
left it behind with the experimenter. Two
children (one each from first and third grades)
were dropped from the study, because they
volunteered that they knew that they would
first get a "silly" toy and then the pens.
all data had been
Debriefing.-When
collected, the experimenter went to each
classroom and explained what the real nature
of the study was. The third and fifth graders
readily acknowledged that they thought the
baby toy was a "dumb" gift, and many of
them said that, although they were disappointed (they had hoped for more candy and
money), they did not want "to make a fuss
over it." Regrettably, this vague response
could not be adequately pursued in the large
group discussion. The first graders seemed
acquiescent about the whole experiment and
were more interested in simply "being on
television" again.

Session 1.-The
experimenter introduced herself as someone studying how children respond to different commercial selfhelp workbooks. She showed the children a
variety of such workbooks on arithmetic,
handwriting, spelling, and so forth, and told
each child they would select a problem from
one of the books, complete it, and evaluate
its difficulty relative to their classroom work.
They were told they would be videotaped
"so that we can see how children work on
the problems in these books." For their effort
and assistance in the evaluation project they
were told they would receive a gift. The experimenter presented herself warmly and responsively throughout both sessions to the
children. At the conclusion of the first session the experimenter gave the child an attractively wrapped and tied package that
contained a small can of juice, a candy bar,
and 50 cents. The child was asked to unwrap
the gift there at the table (and none hesitated
to do so). The children were subsequently
told that they would be called back to evaluate a second workbook 1 or 2 days later and
that they would receive a second gift at that
time as well.

Compared with the several facial behavior coding systems available (e.g., Blurton-Jones, 1971; Ekman & Friesen, 1978;
Izard, 1979), the scheme used here was relatively simple. The rationale for the simplicity was fourfold: (1) to increase reliability
of coding, (2) to facilitate categorizing the
facial behaviors into dimensions relevant to
assessing whether children might be monitoring their facial expressions, (3) to incorporate additional expressive behaviors (nonfacial) into these relevant dimensions, and
(4) to accommodate to the greater loss of eye
region facial behavior (compared with the
mouth region), because the children frequently tended to look downward at the gift
and not at the camera.

Session 2.-In the second session the

children completed another problem in a

The additional nonfacial expressive behaviors coded in the data included vocaliza-

Results
Coding

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Carolyn Saarni
tions, changes in gaze direction (i.e., contact
with the experimenter or gift), selected body/
limb movements, and abrupt departures from
the room. Both facial and nonfacial behaviors
were assigned to three dimensions; these
three dimensions were simply the positive
dimension, negative dimension, and transitional response dimension. While the positive and negative dimensions are directly definable as referring to behaviors that express
either positive or negative affective displays
(see Ekman et al., 1972; Harper, Wiens, &
Matarazzo, 1978), the transitional response
dimension requires more descriptive detail
and rationale.
This last dimension had arbitrarily assigned to it 12 expressive behaviors that were
either (a) minimally positive in affect (e.g.,
slight smile) or (b) suggestive of uncertainty,
tentativeness, or interpersonal tension (e.g.,
two or more changes in gaze direction between gift and experimenter, giggling). The
low-intensity positive behaviors were postulated as representing the initial acquisition
phase of displaying expressive behavior that
is at odds with one's internal emotional reaction. The implicit assumption was that
children showing these behaviors have become aware of the display rule "look pleased,
despite receiving a disappointing gift" but
are still in the process of learning how to
dissociate emotional state from externally
displayed expressive behavior.
Among the second kind of transitional
responses, suggestive of uncertainty or tension, were those behaviors that may be
thought of as adaptors (e.g., touching the face
or head with one's hand), defined by Ekman
and Friesen (1969b) as fragments of kinesic
behavior that were once directed toward some

1507

bodily need or toward dealing with emotions

and interpersonal interaction. In another early
paper, Ekman and Friesen (1969a) go on to
suggest that during deception adaptor activity would increase, functioning as a sort of
"nonverbal leakage" of the deception. Insofar as display rule usage may represent a
deception (one's real emotional state may not
be directly expressed), then adaptor activity
might be particularly evident in those children who have not yet mastered a smooth
and well-practiced execution of display ruleregulated expressive behavior. From this
perspective, adaptor activity is appropriately
included in the transitional response dimension. Table 1 contains the expressive behaviors assigned to each of these dimensions.
Using the criteria from Table 1, the videotapes of the subjects' expressive behavior
were scored in both sessions from the moment the gift was exposed until the experimenter said to the subject either "thank you"
in session 1 or "the gift must be a mistake"
in session 2. The amount of time that lapsed
during this interval was by necessity variable
in that an unforced interaction between experimenter and child was considered more
important (for eliciting realistically spontaneous and genuine expressive behavior) than
a standardized time interval. In all cases the
time interval was brief, rarely exceeding 10
sec.
Slow motion playback and still-frame
analyses of the tapes were used to code expressive behavior. Repeated instances of the
same behavior were not counted toward frequency totals. Two judges independently
coded all the session 2 tapes; reliability varied across the three dimensions, with the
positive dimension showing the highest in-

TABLE 1
DIMIENSIONSOF EXPRESSIVEBEHAVIOR
Positive

Dimension

Broad smile with teeth showing

Broad, closed lip smile
Enthusiastic "thank you"
Arched brows as in positive
surprise
Smiling eye contact with
experimenter
Eye crinkle while smiling

Negative

Dimension

Nose wrinkling
Lowered brows as in a frown or as in
annoyance, disappointment
Omitted "thank you"
Puckered or pursed mouth
Tight, straight-line mouth
Avoids eye contact with experimenter
Negative noise emitted (e.g., snort,
"ugh")
Abrupt departure from room
Shoulder shrug

Transitional Response Dimension

or closed lips
Slight smile-open
Faint or mumbled "thank you"
Knit brows while smiling
slightly, or as in distress
Tongue movements visible outside mouth
Two or more gaze shifts between gift and experimenter
Biting or teeth visible on lips
Hand to face, head
Head tilt, turn
Questioning vocalization
Laughing, giggling
Mouthing (opening, shutting)
Abrupt loss of smile

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1508

Child Development

terrater reliability, r = .95. The transitional

response dimension obtained a correlation of
r = .86, and the negative dimension was lowest with r = .77.
Computed for each subject was a frequency total for each of the three dimensions, separately for sessions 1 and 2, for a
total of six summary scores per subject. Table
2 contains the mean frequencies for each dimension according to grade and sex for sessions 1 and 2.
Analyses
The children's data were analyzed in
three ways. First, difference scores (session
1 - session 2) were calculated for each expressive dimension and analyzed for age and
sex main effects and interactions. Second,
analyses of age and sex main effects and interactions were undertaken for each session
separately so as to justify further the inference that regulation of expressive behavior
was indeed occurring when the children received the baby toy in the second session.
Third, the specific behaviors within each dimension were examined by calculating proportional frequencies. This permitted a descriptive
profile of which expressive
behaviors, across the total number of behaviors coded, were most prevalent and in
which age group.

Differences between sessions 1 and 2.Since the difference scores (session 1 - session 2) for each expressive dimension yielded
negative values whenever a session 2 frequency exceeded that of session 1, a weight
of 10 was added to all difference scores to
make them all positive values. Thus, a score
less than 10 meant that session 2 exceeded
session 1, a score of 10 meant that there was
no change, and a score greater than 10 meant
that session 1 exceeded session 2. These difference scores were then analyzed by means
of separate 2 (sex) x 3 (age group) analyses
of variance for each of the three expressive
dimensions.
For the negative dimension, the main
effect of age was significant, F(2,39) = 11.75,
p < .01. The main effect for sex was also
significant, F(1,39) = 10.72, p < .01, and the
interaction of age x sex was significant,
F(2,39) = 26.51, p < .01. The interaction was
of primary interest, and follow-up pairwise
analyses of variance indicated that both the
youngest and oldest boys revealed significantly greater increases in negative behavior
in session 2 relative to the youngest and oldest girls, p < .05.
For the positive dimension, the main effect of age was again significant, F(2,39) =
22.52, p < .01, while the main effect of sex

TABLE2
MEAN FREQUENCY AND STANDARD DEVIATION FOR EACH DIMENSION
ACCORDING TO SESSION 1 AND 2, GRADE, AND SEX
POSITIVE

NEGATIVE

TRANSITIONAL

SESSION,

ANDSEX Mean
GRADE,
Session 1:
First:
Boys.......
Girls ......
Third:
Boys.......
Girls ......
Fifth:
Boys.......
Girls ......
Session 2:
First:
Boys.......
Girls ......
Third:
Boys.......
Girls ......
Fifth:
Boys.......
Girls ......

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

.80
1.33

1.17
1.02

1.40
.50

1.02
1.04

.60
.83

.80
.83

2.00
2.17

.44
1.07

.50
.50

.46
.76

1.17
.50

.76
1.12

2.20
2.71

1.12
.45

.60
.29

.41
.45

.40
.14

.68
.35

.00
.63

.00
.52

3.33
1.88

1.03
1.25

.83
2.13

1.17
.83

.75
1.00

1.04
1.29

1.75
1.86

1.03
.90

2.75
1.86

1.04
1.07

.88
1.50

1.36
1.16

2.38
1.38

1.77
1.19

2.63
1.50

1.19
1.31

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Carolyn Saarni
was not. However, the interaction of age x
sex was again significant, F(2,39) = 27.09, p
< .01. These effects were more difficult to
explain in that follow-up analyses of variance
revealed that the main effect of age was because the youngest children showed the least
change in positive behavior from session 1
to session 2, p < .05. The interaction was
because the third- and fifth-grade boys revealed greater decreases in positive behaviors from session 1 to session 2 relative
to third- and fifth-grade girls, p < .05. Thus,
as compared with the boys' behavior, the two
older groups of girls maintained a level of
positive expressive behavior in session 2, despite receiving an inappropriate gift, that did
not differ as much from their positive behavior frequency in session 1. For changes
in the transitional response dimension, neither main effect nor interaction
were
significant.
Analysis of age and sex within each session.-Separate 2 x 3 multivariate analyses
of variance were undertaken with sex and
age as the respective factors and the summary scores for the three expressive dimensions as the dependent variables. Only the
significant results will be mentioned here.
For session 1 the analyses revealed that age
was a significant factor for the positive expressive dimension, which was largely because the two older age groups gave considerably more positive responses than the
youngest children. For the second session
the analyses indicated that the main effect
for age on positive expressive behavior only
approached significance, p < .06, with increased positive behavior associated with increased age. The age x sex interaction was
also significant for session 2, specifically for
the transitional dimension; both third- and
fifth-grade boys displayed substantially more
transitional expressive behavior in session 2
relative to girls and first-grade boys. Firstand fifth-grade males also revealed significantly more negative expressive responses
than their female age mates in session 2.
To understand more fully how age and
sex interacted in producing different expressive behavior as the children went from session 1 to session 2, a set of graphs was developed. These graphs also support the
inference that expressive behavior was indeed being regulated in the second session
by the older children and most particularly
by the older girls.
Figure 1 displays separately for sessions
1 and 2 the mean frequencies of expressive
behavior across all three dimensions for each

1509

sex within age group. Examination of Figure

1 in conjunction with the preceding statistical results suggests that there may be different maturational patterns for boys and girls
in regulating their expressive behavior in the
situation manipulated here. The pattern for
girls seems to be one of increasing emphasis
on showing positive behaviors and dampening or "miniaturizing" negative behaviors.
The transitional dimension does appear to
be just that; the expressive behaviors are in
transition from being clearly negative to becoming regulated positive displays. For boys,
negative behavior is also reduced with increasing age, but not as much as with the
girls. The emphasis for boys seems to be on
the transitional dimension. This dimension
it will be recalled includes behaviors that are
either mildly positive (e.g., slight smile) or
that convey a disconcerted or even guidanceseeking expressive quality. To call this category of expressive behavior "transitional"
for the boys may be a misnomer; it may be
an endpoint, especially if boys are under less
socialization pressure to appear "nice," despite feeling otherwise, as will be argued
later.

Descriptive

Behavioral Profiles

Percentages based on frequencies of

specific behaviors for each grade were calculated for both sessions to provide a descriptive profile of which behaviors, within
a given dimension and across the total number of behaviors coded, were most prevalent
and occurred in which age group. Table 3
presents this information, according to age
group and expressive dimension; the difference in proportions between sessions 1 and
2 is also included.
Summarizing this tabular information, in
particular the changes in expressive behaviors displayed in session 2, yields the following pattern: from age 6 to 11 there was
marked maintenance of some positive behaviors with increasing age (e.g., broad smile
with teeth showing, enthusiastic thank you);
the youngest children were four times more
likely to show a tight, straight-line mouth
compared with the two older age groups; and
the third graders evidenced more transitional responses, especially in shifting eye
contact between gift and experimenter and
in giggling, compared with the youngest and
oldest children.

Discussion
In contrast to other studies that requested dissimulated expressive behavior

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Session

3.5
MEAN

3.0

FREQUENCY
FREQUENCY
2.5
OF

II

Session

Session

2.0

Session

BEHAVIOR 1.5

_Session

II

I
I

1.0
.5

Pos

Tr Neg

Pos

Tr Neg

FIRST GRADEBOYS

Pos

Tr Neg

Pos

Tr Neg

FIRST GRADE
GIRLS

3.5
MEAN

3.0

Session

FREQUENCY
2.5
OF
BEHAVIOR

Session

II

Session

I
Session

2.0

II

1.5
1.0
.5
Pos

Tr Neg

Pos

Tr Neg

THIRDGRADEBOYS

Pos

Tr Neg

Pos

Tr Neg

THIRDGRADE
GIRLS

3.5
MEAN

3.0

Session
Session

FREQUENCY
2.5
OF

II

Session

2.0
Session

BEHAVIOR 1.5

II

1.0

.5
0--

Pos

Tr Neg

Pos

Tr Neg

FIFTH GRADEBOYS

Pos

Tr Neg

Pos

Tr Neg

FIFTH GRADEGIRLS

Pos= Positive dimension; Tr= Transitional dimension; Neg= Negative dimension

FIG.1.-Mean frequencies for each expressive dimension for boys and girls, accordingto grades 1, 3,
and 5 in session 1 and 2.

1510

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1512

Child Development

from children (see Feldman et al., 1979; Feldman & White, 1980), the present study investigated children's spontaneous attempts
to regulate their expressive behavior. Such
regulation often produces a dissociation between internally attributed affect and externally displayed expressive behavior. This
study was limited, however, to inferring that
such regulation and dissociation were taking
place. The pattern of results suggests that for
older children, especially girls, this inference was valid; older children more frequently revealed a higher incidence of positive expressive behaviors upon receiving the
inappropriate baby toy than the youngest
children. Older children, especially the boys,
also used more transitional responses compared with the youngest children. The highest frequency of negative behaviors was
shown by the youngest boys upon receiving
the baby toy, who likewise revealed no positive behavior.
It could be argued that the older children genuinely experienced more positive
affect (for whatever reason) than the younger
ones in session 2 and thus were not regulating their expressive behavior but were simply displaying what they actually felt. Although this argument cannot be rejected out
of hand, it is less likely than the argument
Sthat the older children were indeed monitoring and regulating their expressive behavior. The latter position receives support
from the complex interplay of results obtained in comparing expressive behavior in
session 2 with that displayed in session 1
when a more desirable gift was received (see
Figure 1 in particular) and from the earlier
research in which a photographed conflict
scenario that described a youngster receiving a disappointing gift readily elicited from
8-10-year-olds selections of "appropriate"
facial expressions that the photographed
children "should" adopt to mask their disappointment. The older children in that study
were also able to cite reasons why such a
dissemblance was desirable or appropriate.
Finally, fifth-grade children in the present
study did verbalize during the debriefing that
the gift was disappointing; however, they had
not wanted "to make a fuss over it," suggesting that they had not expressed their
genuine affective state during session 2.
There are at least three plausible developmental determinants of regulated expressive behavior: (1) awareness of a social
convention or "rule" regarding expressive
behavior in some situation, (2) ability to produce the conventionally prescribed expres-

sive behavior, and (3) motivation to carry out

the prescribed behavior. These three determinants can be used to integrate the age and
sex differences obtained in this study. The
youngest children, particularly the boys, appeared not to have acquired more than rudimentary "ability" in carrying out the display rule of looking pleased, despite receiving
an inappropriate gift. On the other hand, motivational differences in performing this display rule may be responsible for the sex differences obtained in this study, whereas no
sex differences had been found in children's
understanding of display rule usage in earlier research (Saarni, 1979). The actual implementation of expressive behavior regulation may well be influenced by sex-role
socialization. Thus, if there are sex-role pressures in North America (and perhaps especially so in parochial schools) for girls to appear nice, pleasant, and agreeable, despite
feeling otherwise (see Brooks-Gunn & Matthews, 1979; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974), then
the present finding that, overall, girls revealed less negative and more positive behavior upon receiving an inappropriate gift
than boys makes sense as a motivational sex
difference rather than as an ability sex difference. Boys, for example, may feel that (a)
they will not incur the same degree of disapproval for showing "ungrateful" behavior
or (b) they do not feel as concerned about
receiving disapproval for "ungrateful" behavior. In either case, the consequences for
not performing a social rule are perceived as
minimal. On the other hand, boys may exceed girls in being motivated to regulate expressive behavior when they find themselves
in situations feeling hurt or vulnerable but
under sex-role pressure not to show such an
emotional state. (The latter situation does not
lend itself to ethical standards of research in
experimentally investigating the effects of
situational constraints on display rule usage.)
In conclusion, the observational data obtained in this study suggest some rich paths
for further exploration of how children may
regulate their expressive behavior in assorted situations. The generalizability
of
these data is, however, limited to children
who have socialization experiences similar
to that of the parochial school children who
participated in this research. Insofar as there
had been no systematic observational information as to how children actually behave
expressively when under the pressure of
some societal norm, this study does provide
some indication of how negative and/or positive expressive behavior may manifest itself
and of how transitional behavior, composed

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Carolyn Saarni
of adaptor activity and minimally positive (or
low-intensity) responses, may be revealed
before smooth and well-practiced regulated
behavior takes over.

Reference
1.

Notes

Krauss, R., & Morency, N. The nonverbal encoding and decoding of affect in first and fifth

grades. Paperpresented at the annualmeeting

2.

of the American Psychological Association,

Montreal, September 1980.
Iannotti, R. A longitudinal investigation of roletaking, altruism, and empathy. Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Society

for Researchin Child Development, New Orleans, March1977.

3.

4.

Watson, M. A developmental study of empathy: Egocentrism to sociocentrism or simple

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Saarni, C. When not to show what you think
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