And They All Lived Unhappily Ever After: Positive and Negative Emotions in American and Russian Picture Books

The U.S. and Russian cultural contexts are thought to foster different models of emotion, with the former emphasizing positive emotions more and negative emotions less than the latter. Little is known about the ways in which parents transmit these models of emotions to children. Cultural products, such as popular storybooks, may serve to provide important tools of transmission. Two studies examined similarities and differences in the extent to which children's books from these cultural contexts depict emotions. In Study 1, U.S., Russian American, and Russian parents described the extent to which books that they recently read to their children depict positive and negative emotions. Although no differences emerged for depictions of positive emotions, U.S. parents described reading books with lower levels of negative emotions than Russian parents, with Russian American parents in between. These differences were partially due to parental beliefs about sadness. In Study 2, verbal and nonverbal depictions of emotions were compared for sets of popular children's books from the U.S. and Russia. U.S. books verbally referenced anger and sadness and depicted happiness, anger, and fear faces less frequently than Russian books. Taken together, these studies suggest that American and Russian parents value and expose their children to different depictions of emotions, particularly negative emotions. Future studies need to examine the ways in which children in these cultural contexts interpret depictions of emotions.