Comparing Palestinian and American Children’s Understanding of Fear
Mary H. Kayyal*, James A. Russell, & Sherri C. Widen
Boston College
Presented at the Cognitive Development Society’s 2007 Conference, Santa Fe, NM
The children participated in two tasks:
1. A story-telling task: Asking preschoolers to
tell a story that describes the cause and
consequence of fear is a cognitively feasible
task that examines how Palestinian and
American children understand ‘scary’ events.
™ We predicted: due to greater exposure to
military threat and conflict (reality-based
fears), Palestinian children will be more
likely to use the reality theme (and less
likely to use the fantasy theme) than
American children to describe the causes
of fear.
2. A facial categorization task: Asking
preschoolers to select ‘scared’ faces from an
array of different facial expressions of
emotion examines the breadth of their fear
category.
™ We predicted: Palestinian children’s fear
category, as indicated by the number of
faces that they select as ‘scared’, will be
broader than American children’s.
Method
Participants
Participants are (N = 30, male and female, ages
3 to 7 years) Palestinian children living in the
Greater Jerusalem, Israel, for all of whom
Arabic was their primary language. The
comparison group includes (N = 30, male and
female, matched for age and sex) American
children, who were enrolled in Massachusetts
day care centers/preschools, for all of whom
English was their primary language
Bretherton, I., Fritz, J., Zahn-Waxler, C., & Ridgeway, D.
(1986). Learning to talk about emotions: A
functionalist perspective. Child Development, 57, 529548.
Denham, S.A., & Couchand, E.A. (1990). Young
Preschooler’s Understanding of Emotion. Child Study
Journal 20, 171-192.
Jersild, A.T. (1943). Studies of Children’s Fears. In R.G.
Barker, J.S. Kounin, & H.F. Wright (Eds.) Child
Behavior and Development (pp. 329-344). New York:
McGraw-Hill.
Categorization Task Results
HAPPY Choice from Array
Each child was tested individually in his/her native
language (Arabic or English). The study had two phases.
FEAR Choice from Array
Phase 1: Story-telling. In this phase, children were
Percent
asked to tell a story that describes the cause and
consequence for each of five emotions (happiness,
sadness, anger, fear, and surprise).
Phase II: Choice-from-Array task.
On each of five
trials (happiness, surprise, sadness, fear, anger),
participants were presented with a different array of six
facial expressions (happy, sad, angry, scared, surprised,
disgusted). Participants were instructed to, “Look very
carefully at all of the pictures,” and then asked, “Does
anybody feel ‘X’ (one of the five target emotions)?” After
the child made a selection, the child was mildly praised
and the selected picture was removed. The child was
then asked, “Does anybody else feel like ‘X’ or did you
pick them all out?” This procedure was repeated until the
child indicated that nobody else felt the target emotion.
Results
Story-telling Task Results
120
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Palestinian
0
Happy Surprised
Scared
Angry
Disgusted
Sad
Reality
Fantasy
Palestinian
American
Happy Surprised Scared
Angry
Disgusted
American
Children
Figure 1: Palestinian children were more likely to use
the reality theme in their stories to describe the causes
of fear than American children were. This suggests
that the social environment – the presence or absence
of prolonged war and conflict–influences the way
children understand fear. For Palestinian children, a
greater exposure to reality-based fear makes the reality
aspect more salient when they are asked to describe
the causes of fear. Furthermore, understanding realitybased fears at a young age is an advantageous
acquisition for Palestinian children as it can help them
recognize important cues in an environment of threat.
References
Lenz, K.A. (1985). The expressed fears of young children.
Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 16, 3-13.
Strayer, Janet (1986). Children’s Attributions Regarding
Situational Determinants of Emotion in Self and
Others. Developmental Psychology, 22, 649-654.
Russell, J.A. & Widen, S.C. (2002). Words versus Faces in
Evoking Preschool Children’s Knowledge of the
Causes of Emotions. International Journal of Behavioral
Development, 26, 97-103).
Happy
Surprised
Scared
Angry
Disgusted
Sad
Figure 4: Palestinian and American children’s happy
category did not differ. This is important because it
implies that the breadth of Palestinian children’s fear
(and surprise) categories is due to socioenvironmental factors.
Discussion and Conclusion
The current study demonstrated that Palestinian
children’s concept of fear differs from American
children’s.
™ In the story-telling task, Palestinian children
were more likely to use the reality-theme to
describe the causes of fear, whereas American
children used the reality theme and the fantasy
theme more equally.
™ This study extends previous findings that
show children use the fantasy theme to
describe the causes of fear to a cross-cultural
sample (Lentz, 1985; Strayer, 1986; Denham &
Zoller, 1991).
Sad
Face
Palestinian
Palestinian
Face
Face
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Palestinian
60
20
SURPRISE Choice from Array
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
American
80
40
American
Figure 2: As we predicted, Palestinian children’s fear
category was broader than American children’s: A
higher proportion of Palestinian children included the
nontarget negative facial expressions (angry, disgusted,
sad) in their fear category than did American children.
In a repeated measures ANOVA, the culture x emotion
interaction for fear was not significant. Due to our a
priori prediction, planned comparisons revealed
significantly more Palestinian than American children
included the surprise (F (1, 57) = 4.15, p=.05), sadness
(p=.02), disgust (p=.009), and marginally more included
the anger face (p=.07).
Themes Children Used in Describing the
Causes of FEAR
American
100
Percent
Procedure
Percent
Introduction
Children begin to develop a coherent
understanding of emotion at a young age. Research
indicates that eighteen- and 36- month-old children
can label their own and other’s emotions, discuss
past and future emotions, and talk about the causes
and consequences of emotion states (Bretherton, et
al., 1981). While there are several factors that
contribute to the development of emotion
understanding, we propose that children’s social
environment – including their experiences and
interactions – has a significant impact on how they
understand others’ emotional displays and respond
to emotion-eliciting events. Of particular interest is
how children belonging to different cultures –
Palestinian and American– and social environments
(e.g., the presence or absence of war and conflict)
understand basic-level expressions of emotion (e.g.,
happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and
disgust), with a specific focus on fear.
™ What do children think is scary? Prior
research indicates that preschool-aged American
children use the fantasy theme (e.g., including
monsters, ghosts, and other imaginary creatures
to describe the causes of fear (Lentz, 1985;
Strayer, 1986; Denham & Zoller, 1991). Will
this finding replicate cross-culturally?
™ How do Palestinian and American children
recognize facial expressions of fear? Is
recognition of some basic-level facial
expressions of emotion universal to human
nature, as prior research suggests (Ekman,
1980), or can some expressions be culturally
determined?
This Study
This study investigated how Palestinian and
American children understand fear – its
causes and associated facial expressions.
Palestinian children are of interest because,
unlike their American counterparts, they
have been born and raised in the presence of
prolonged conflict and war.
Percent
Abstract
This study investigated how Palestinian and
American children understand fear. Palestinian
children (N=30, 3-7 years) living in the West
Bank/Israel and American children (N=30,
matched for age and sex) were asked to tell a story
that describes the cause and consequence for each
of five emotions (fear, surprise, happiness,
sadness, and anger). Palestinian children were less
likely than American children to use the fantasy
theme to describe the causes of fear. Next, they
completed five categorization trials. A higher
proportion of Palestinian children included
nontarget negative facial expressions in their fear
category than American children. Results suggest
that Palestinian children have a broader fear
category than American children, as indicated by
the faces children selected as ‘scared.’
Figure 3: Palestinian children’s surprise category was
also broader than American children’s: A higher
proportion of Palestinian children included nontarget
negative facial expressions (scared, angry, disgusted,
sad) in their surprise category than American children.
Palestinian children were less likely to include the
‘happy’ face and the ‘surprised’ face in their surprise
category. In a repeated measures ANOVA, the culture
x emotion interaction was significant, F(1, 57) = 4.86,
p < .001. In Fisher’s LSD comparisons, there were
no significant differences between Palestinian and
American children for any of the faces.
™ Because Palestinian children are more
consciously aware of the threat and conflict
that surrounds them, their reality-based scripts
for fear are more developed and more salient
than their fantasy-based scripts for fear.
™ Some Palestinian children did use the
fantasy-theme to describe the causes of fear,
suggesting that fear of fantastical creatures is a
fundamental aspect of childhood development.
™ Both American and Palestinian children
included several nontarget negative facial
expressions in their fear category, but Palestinians
were more likely to include other negative facial
expressions.
™ This finding suggests that threat and fear is
so pervasive in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict
that they attribute fear to all negative facial
expressions at an age that children in American
have begun to differentiate among them.
Widen, S.C. & Russell, J.A. (2004). The relative power of
an emotion's facial expression, label, and behavioral
consequence to evoke preschoolers’ knowledge of its
cause. Cognitive Development, 19, 111-125.
*contact Mary Kayyal: [email protected]