Emotional Intelligence

How many of these competencies are present by middle childhood? To answer this question requires a description of the development of emotional understanding in the school-age years.

By middle childhood, children are able to reflect on their own emotional experiences and those of others. They readily understand that their cognitive appraisal of emotional states is important in determining how they feel about people or events. For example, although children under age 7 can describe how their parents might be proud or ashamed of their actions, not until about age 8 can children understand that they can be proud or ashamed of themselves, even in the absence of adult observation or feedback (Harter & Whitesell, 1989). They also believe that emotions are strongest immediately after an emotion-eliciting situation, and that they become weaker with time (Saarni, Mumme, & Campos, 1998).

In addition, several studies have shown that school-age children understand that they can conceal their genuine feelings and instead display false emotional reactions, for example, pretending you like a gift so as not to hurt your grandfather’s feelings (Saarni, Mumme, & Campos, 1998). Researchers have consistently found that school-agers between ages 9 and 12, compared to younger children, can understand multiple, sometimes conflicting, emotions. For example, school-age children can be happy and sad at the same time when thinking about a divorce situation (“I’m glad I get to live with my dad, but I’m sad about not being able to live with my mom too”). However, not until age 12 can children think simultaneously about opposing emotions towards the same target (“I love my dad, even though I’m mad at him right now”) (Whitesell & Harter, 1989). Children’s book authors routinely focus on such middle childhood emotional conflict.

If the conflicting emotions are not equally intense or if the emotions are very dissimilar, children may experience conflict (Whitesell & Harter, 1989). For example, depression has been described by early adolescents as a mixture of  sadness and anger. Researchers have found that emotions produce the greatest conflict (a) when a negative emotion is either equal to or more intense than a positive emotion and (b) when the two emotions are quite different, or even opposites (Harter & Whitesell, 1989).

For example, imagine that our case study child Justin is proud of himself for winning his game and simultaneously angry with his best friend for not congratulating him.

By the end of middle childhood, children are also better able to appreciate the psychological complexity of emotional experiences. For example, by age 11 they are more likely to attribute emotional arousal to internal causes rather than to external events. This emergent emotional understanding allows school-age children to predict the emotions of others without needing to observe facial or verbal cues, such as inferring how others may feel in competitive or conflictual situations even if they were not present (Thompson, 1998; see also Lightfoot & Bullock, 1990).

Consider that even if he had not seen Justin reach a difficult level of the video game, his friend could have inferred that Justin is pleased with himself.