Aggressive and withdrawn preschoolers' emotional responses

The emotions of aggressive and withdrawn children were examined in object-conflict and group-entry situations. Izard's (1977) differential theory of emotion suggests that aggressive children should have more hostile emotions, and withdrawn children more depressive emotions. Wright and Mischel's (1987) conditional approach to dispositional constructs suggests that aggressive children's hostility would be most evident during object-conflict, and withdrawn children's depressive responses most evident during group entry. Four- and 5-year-old boys and girls (N = 128) were assigned to aggressive, withdrawn, or control groups according to teachers' behaviour ratings. Interviews about children's emotional experiences in hypothetical object-conflict and group-entry situations failed to yield predicted group and situation differences. However, during semi-structured object-conflict and group-entry situations, aggressive children displayed more intense anger and more frequent anger blends, while withdrawn children were observed to show more intense sadness and more frequent fear-sadness blends. Displays of negative affect were related in theoretically meaningful ways to patterns of children's social behaviour. Failure to find situational specificity suggests that affective features of children's social competence may operate at a general level