Tears for girls and teeth for boys: the influence of gender on children’s depiction of sadness and anger in their drawings
Résumé
Up to now, very few studies investigated the in!uence of gender
on the depiction of emotions in children’s drawings. However, the
literature on emotions reveals di"erences between boys and girls in
various kinds of tasks (e.g. recognising emotional facial expressions,
understanding an emotional situation, etc.). Therefore, we examined
the impact of gender on the depiction of sadness and anger. We took
into account children’s gender but also the gender of the character
expressing the target emotion. Forty-four boys and forty-seven girls
aged 7–8 and thirty-six boys and #fty-three girls aged 9–10 were
asked to listen to stories where the main character (either a male or
a female) was feeling sad or angry and then to draw the facial cues
corresponding to the target emotion. Two methods were used to rate
the drawings: judges assessed the correct vs. incorrect depiction of
the two target emotions and a content analysis was then conducted
on the correct drawings so as to reveal the type of facial cues used by
children. By showing the major in!uence of children’s gender on their
depiction of sadness and anger, our #ndings o"er promising lines of
research in educational and clinical settings.
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