The Development Of Children's Emotion Understanding In Situation That People's Desires Conflict With Moral Rules

Emotion understanding is an important part of Children's Theory of mind. Emotion understanding (especially on emotion understanding of others), not only confers to the external morphology, but also needs to recognize some subjective factors that is related to emotion such as desire or something like that. Generally speaking, the individual whose desire is realized will feel happy; while desire is blocked will feel bad. However, Individual behavior can not be decided only by their own desires, and it will be restricted by various kinds of social rules, such as moral rules. Here it will relate to the problem of children's emotion understanding in situation that people's desires conflict with moral rules. At present on the children's emotion understanding in situation that people's desires conflict with moral rules mainly is concentrated in the field of judgment and attribution of moral emotion, and most researchers studies children's emotion understanding of desire-fulfilling rule breaker in anti-social situation and desire-blocked rule follower in pro-social situation. This paper, a comprehensive literature review was made with regard to emotion understanding, and further analysis was focused on the limitations existing in the prior research. On the basis of this, the issue of this paper was put forward, and this paper on children aged 3-7, to explore emotion understanding characteristics of different behavior types in different situations.The major findings in my paper are follows:1. It doesn't disaccord between the development of children's moral judgment and emotional judgment. Most 3-year-old-age can make moral judgments between desire-fulfilling rule breaker and desire-blocked rule follower correctly, and along with the increase in age, The passing rate of moral judgment is gradually increased. But in the emotion judgment trails, especially for 4,5-year-old-age, the "happy victimizer" and "sad helper" are existed widely.2. It has age difference of emotion understanding in situation that people's desires conflict with moral rules between the ages of three to seven. Children's emotion judgment of desire-fulfilling rule breakers and desire-blocked rule followers follow "sad-happy-sad" and "happy-sad-happy" respectively. 3 year-old-age of children's emotion understanding is on the basis of the objective value of behavior results, 4,5 year-old–age of children is based on whether the individuals'desires achieve or not, and 6,7-year-old children begin to understand the emotion based on whether the actors comply with the moral rules.3. The emotion understanding of children aged 3-7 about different situations follows the same patterns. But in anti-social situation, the total person times of judging desire-fulfilling rule breaker feel"happy", and attributed to desire orientation are significantly higher than the pro-social situation.4. The emotion understanding of children aged 3-7 about different action types in different situations follows the different patterns. Children's emotion judgment of desire-fulfilling rule breakers follows "sad-happy-sad", and desire-blocked rule followers follows "happy-sad-happy". The total person times of judging desire-fulfilling rule breaker feel"happy", and attributed to desire orientation are significantly higher than the desire-blocked rule follower.5. It has significant difference in the emotion intensity of children aged 3-7 in Simple-desire situation and the situation that people's desires conflict with moral rules. The emotion intensity about desire-fulfiller and desire-blocker in Simple-desire situation are significantly higher than in conflict situations.6. There are differences between different emotion explanation trails, children of predicting and explaining trails attributed to desire orientation were significantly higher than that attributed to explanation-only trails. When children directly are confronted with characters displaying this emotion-desire mismatch and ask them to explain the cause, the children will demonstrate a more mature understanding about the influence of rules on emotion.