Developmental and gender differences in the language for emotions ...

COGNITION AND EMOTION, 2004, 18 (7), 913±938

Developmental and gender differences in the language for emotions across the adolescent years Richard O'Kearney The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

Mark Dadds University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia Most information about the development of emotion language comes from studies of the early acquisition of terms for emotions. This study examined emotion language in 303 adolescents aged between 12 and 18 years. It used a theoretically derived classification model to describe and examine age-dependent changes and gender differences in the semantic, referential, and causal structure of their language for emotions in response to vignette material containing the prototypical condition for anger and fear. The semantic profiles of emotion terms produced emphasise the nonuniqueness of ``theoretical'' emotional conditions with blends and combination of emotion terms typical in the linguistic representation of emotions of these adolescents. The results demonstrate continuity in the development of adolescent emotion language with more differentiated, broader, and less semantically specific emotion referents being produced with older age. However, the results also show a shift with age in the representation of emotions toward a more externalised focus at the expense of a subjectivist/experiential focus. Boys showed a relative preference for expressive/behavioural referents while girls produced more inner directed and less semantically specified referents. However, girls' expected relative preference for referents with a cognitive focus was not confirmed. Overall, the results indicate that the structure of emotion language in adolescents is age-dependent and sensitive to gender-related ``display rules'' for talking about emotions and their causes. The implications of the results for advancing the study of the language of emotions are discussed within the limitations and constraints imposed by studying experimentally elicited language.

Investigations of young children's language for emotions (Bretherton, Fritz, Zahn-Waxler, & Ridgeway, 1986; Clancy, 1999; Kauschke & Klann-Deliu, 1997; Lewis, Wolman, & King, 1972; Smiley & Hutternlocher, 1989) suggest that children initially base their use and comprehension of emotion referents on Correspondence should be addressed to Dr Richard O'Kearney, School of Psychology, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia; e-mail: [email protected] # 2004 Psychology Press Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pp/02699931.html DOI:10.1080/02699930341000356

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expressive or behavioural aspects of emotion. Situational determinants of emotions become increasingly important in children's language of emotion (DeConti & Dickerson, 1994; Denham, Zoller, & Couchod, 1994; Wellman, Harris, Banerjee, & Sinclair, 1995) while the two sets of criteria are the basis on which the subsequent use of more subjective/experiential emotion referents develops. Wellman (1995) describes this linguistic progression as reflecting a shift from action-expressive conceptualisations of emotions to situationist understandings and finally to mentalistic understandings. However, the increasing reliance on subjective/experiential terms in children's talk about emotions does not mean that the expressive/behavioural and situational terms become irrelevant. Wellman notes: ``Young children's understanding of emotion mixes subjective/experiential understanding of emotional states with more objective construals and discourse as well'' (Wellman, 1995 p. 307, italics added). The nature of the mix of linguistic representations of emotions may have important implications for the development of self-awareness and for the regulation of emotional experiences. The capacity to produce mixed representations of emotions may enhance the ability to make fine-grained distinctions between various emotional experiences because it allows the individual to access and monitor diverse experiences, and to relate them to other aspects of mental functioning. In addition, as language offers an effective means of organising self-regulatory responses (Kopp, 1989), a more discriminating language of emotions may increase the range and appropriateness of options for regulating emotions. For example, a representation of emotion predominantly using expressive or behavioural referents may constrain regulatory strategies to behavioural or expressive actions, such as avoidance or acting out. On the other hand, the effectiveness of strategies that are primarily cognitive, such as self-talk about the emotion or reappraisal of the emotion, may depend on a referential structure that is predominantly mentalistic. Our decision to study emotion language in adolescence was the result of a number of considerations. First, as key developmental demands on adolescents include increased self-awareness and self-regulation, descriptive and developmental data on their linguistic representation of emotions may enhance current knowledge about self-awareness and the socialisation of emotions. There is also a need for descriptive data about changes in the production of emotion referents during adolescence to complement and extend the reliable data about the development of the emotional lexicon in younger children (Alridge & Wood, 1997; Bretherton et al., 1986; Bretherton, McNew, & Beeghly-Smith, 1981; Dunn, Bretherton, & Munn, 1985; Ridgeway, Waters, & Kuczaj, 1985; Wellman, 1995; Wellman et al., 1995). Some researchers note that the development of emotion language during the later childhood and adolescent years focuses `òn greater ability to add variety, subtlety, nuance and complexity to their use of emotion-descriptive words'' (Saarni, Mumme, & Campos, 1997, p. 273), but

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there is little empirical documentation about the nature of these changes. We can, however, draw some inferences about emotion language in adolescents from studies documenting the development of younger children's emotional understanding. These studies show that by the beginning of adolescence, children have a growing appreciation of the complexity of emotions. Subjectivist understandings become more dominant with age and children show an enhanced capacity to deal with more complicated emotional experiences including those of mixed hedonic tone. Such findings raise questions about the corresponding accomplishments in the emotion language of adolescents. For example, it is unclear whether their emotion language shows a broader range and complexity of emotion terms and mix of expressive/behavioural, situational and subjective/ experiential terms with the latter type becoming increasingly dominant with age. The final consideration driving the current study is that important developments in the emotional lexicon may continue to occur in late childhood and adolescence, for example, the differentiation of anger and sad referents (Bamberg, 1997; Graham, 1988; Levine, 1995; Yirmiya & Weiner, 1986), and the appreciation of and reference to self-focused emotions (Donaldson & Westerman, 1986; Ferguson & Stegge, 1995; Ferguson, Stegge, & Damhuis, 1991; Reimer, 1996). This study concentrates on two factors (type of emotion, and gender) that have theoretical importance and have been shown in younger samples to influence the development of emotion language. There are consistent findings that, regardless of socioeconomic class, young children's talk about emotions is both more frequent and more varied for negative emotions and that children are more likely to interact verbally about emotions and discuss the causes of feelings when they have been angry or upset (Burger & Miller, 1999; Dunn, Brown, & Beardsall, 1991; Dunn, Brown, Slomkowski, Tesla, & Youngblade, 1991; Hughes & Dunn, 2002; Miller & Sperry, 1988). For example, Burger and Miller's (1999) examined co-narrations between mothers and their preschool children about past events and showed that children's emotion talk is predominantly about negative emotions and that negative emotion terms included state words (e.g, sad, mad), words for activity (e.g., feel like biting, hitting), negative attribution terms (e.g., yucky, fraidy cat), and expletives. There is lack of work, however, contrasting discourse about different types of negative emotions. Consequently, our study focuses on the language for emotions produced in two common negative emotion contexts, anger and fear. Most of the empirical work relating to gender differences considers how emotions are expressed in a broad sense rather than specifically considering the language in which emotion are talked about. There are clear gender differences in emotion display rules with males preferring behavioural and action/expressive modes and females preferring verbal and facial expressive modes (Brody & Hall, 1993). There is also evidence that girls and boys have different starting

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points and different developmental trajectories for emotion talk (Cervantes & Callanan, 1998), and that gender is important in individual differences in children's early understanding and articulation of emotions (Adams, Kubeli, Boyle, & Fivush, 1995; Denham, Cook, & Zoller, 1992). However, the role of gender in talk about emotions for adolescents is less clear. Stapley and Haviland (1989) examined the self-report frequency of referents for 12 fundamental emotions in youth aged 11 to 17 and noted gender differences for several of the negative emotions. References to other-directed negative emotions (e.g., anger) were predominant for boys, and inner-directed negative emotions (such as sadness, fear, guilt, and shame) were characteristic of girls. Other findings suggest that females more frequently report or express emotion terms referring to innerdirected emotions and also more intense positive and negative feelings (Brody, 1993). However, some studies with older adolescents and young adults either found no gender differences in self-reported frequency or intensity of anger experiences (Allen & Haccoun, 1976), or found gender differences for other directed emotions terms that varied with age and the nature of the emotion eliciting situations (Wintre, Polivy, & Murray, 1990). Besides these inconsistencies, most of the available research relied on questionnaires or experimenter-generated checklists of emotion referents. Such methods may enhance gender difference expectations or gender emotion stereotypes in respondents (LaFrance & Banaji, 1992). A naturalistic study comparing emotion talk in adolescents (Anderson & Leaper, 1998) found no differences in the amount or types of emotion talk produced by females and males in same and mixed gender conversations. To capture the potential complexity and range of emotion language in adolescent language users (Nippold, 1993), the work we report here classifies emotion language using a comprehensive model that integrates various theories of emotion language. The model makes several distinctions. The first distinction is semantic (Johnson-Laird & Oatley, 1989; Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, O'Connor, 1987; Storm & Storm, 1987) and differentiates amongst basic negative emotion classes (anger, sad, fear), negative referents not specified within these semantic classes and self-focused negative emotion terms (e.g., guilty, ashamed, embarrassed). This category also includes classes for positive, and positive self-focused emotion terms. The second distinction relates to the referential domains initially proposed in Ortony and colleagues' (Ortony, Clore, & Collins, 1988; Ortony, Clore, & Foss, 1987) work and differentiates between terms used to describe emotions that refer to external or situational conditions (situational domain), those that describe or emphasise internal physical, expressive or action states or dispositions (expressive/ behavioural domain), those that refer specifically to pure emotional states, and those that focus on cognition. Together, emotion terms that refer purely to emotional states or focus on cognition make up a subjective/experiential domain of emotion referents.


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Our classification model also examines the quality of the emotion referent according to how typical the term is for the emotion (Differentiation) (Shaver et al., 1987; Storm, Jones, & Storm, 1996), its intensity (e.g., annoyed, in a rage, or extremely mad, a little sad), and involvement. Involvement refers to one aspect of the potency or motivational dimension of emotional language (Osgood, Suci, & Tannerbaum, 1957; Wundt, 1916). It is identified by a range of language devices, such as modal verbs and adverbs, modal auxiliary verbs, objective versus subjective epistemic verbs, and linking verbs (Caffi & Janney, 1994). Speakers use these types of devices to represent how they externalise their certainty or their involvement with emotions in terms of linguistic behaviour either by `` `living' one's involvement or . . . suppressing it'' (Hubler, 1987, p. 373). The use of involvement and noninvolvement devices and intensity markers can be seen as manifestations of avoidant or approach strategies (Wiener, & Mehrabian, 1968). Two important primary classifications of verbal explanations of the causes of emotions (Harris, 1994) are also included in our classification model. The first represents a distinction between external/situational causes and internal causes. Internal causes refer either to the desire of the person in relationship to the emotion eliciting event or to his/her beliefs about that event. In addition, as many emotions have intentional objects to which they refer (e.g., anger at, sad about), the object is included as a fourth aspect. The second type of classification of causes is in terms of causal attributions that have an external focus and those for which internal factors predominate. In addition to these categorical divisions, the classification model includes an assessment of the complexity of the causal accounts. The main aims of the study are to describe the nature of the linguistic references to emotions used by adolescents and to investigate age-dependent changes and gender differences in the production of referents to emotion and its causes. The current study addresses a number of specific developments in emotion language across adolescence by predicting age-dependent increases in the evaluative range of referents produced, in the proportion of self-focused referents, in the degree of differentiation of emotion terms, and in the complexity of causal accounts. It is hypothesised that the distinction between anger and sad referents in the current sample will become more marked with age. It is also predicted that an increase will be observed in the proportion of emotion referents in the subjective/experiential referential domains and of causal accounts referring to beliefs or intentional objects of emotions. The study also examines whether gender differences are evident in the emotion language. In particular, it tests whether females produce a higher proportion of inner-directed emotion terms and more intense emotion referents than their male peers, and whether the referential structure of the emotion language of males is more strongly represented by expressive/behavioural referents and females' emotion language by more cognitive referents.

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METHOD Participants Participants were selected from the first, middle, and last years of two secondary schools in Brisbane, Australia, a city of 1.3 million. Participants were recruited through an information letter from the school sent to the children's parents or guardians. Participation was voluntary and written consent from the student and parent or guardian was obtained. Participants were not remunerated or offered incentives. All children in the three grades were eligible to participate with the exception of those for whom English was a second language or those identified by the school as having significant developmental delay. A total of 303 children or 57.4% of the total sample eligible participated in the study. Both schools enrolled students from large geographical areas that included a diverse range of socioeconomic levels. Overall, 182 participants were female and 121 male with a mean age of 14.78 years (SD = 1.59, Range = 12±18.17 years).

Materials The materials used to elicit emotion language in the current study were two vignettes.1 The two vignettes were constructed to contain the conditions considered necessary to make them good exemplars of events that elicit either anger (vignette 1) or fear (vignette 2) based on Shaver et al.'s (1987) empirical work and Stein and colleagues' goal-directed approach to the organisation of anger and fear experience (Stein & Levine, 1991; Stein, Trabasso, & Liwag, 1993). Because of the salience of interpersonal events in the emotional life of adolescents (Whitesell, Robinson, & Harter, 1993), both vignettes were written to emphasise the interpersonal aspects of the event. To make them comparable in complexity to naturally occurring emotion events that confront adolescents, the quality of important relationships in the vignettes and achievement themes were emphasised (Strayer, 1986). Hence, while the vignettes contained the requisite condition for anger and fear, respectively, their complexity ensured that a range of emotion terms would be elicited. Vignette 1 described an interpersonal conflict between close friends where the protagonist's friend reveals to others in their peer group potentially hurtful information about the protagonist that was told to the friend in confidence. Vignette 2 developed an expectation of achievement by the protagonist in an important classroom situation that is suddenly threatened and replaced by possible failure in front of a peer group and teacher. The instructions for participants and the two vignettes were recorded on an audiocassette and played to the participants using a large audiocassette recorder.

1

Vignettes can be obtained from first author.


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Procedure Experimental sessions were conducted with small groups of 10±15 participants in a classroom at the school during a 40±50 minute period. Each session consisted of two activities. After a general orientation, the experimenter directed participants to listen carefully to the taped instructions and vignettes and to imagine himself/herself as the protagonist in the situation described as vividly as possible. Participants then listened to the audiocassette. After presentation of vignette 1, participants were asked to provide written response to three questions: (a) Describe how you felt. `Ì felt . . .''; (b) What was making you feel that way? `Ì felt that way because . . .''; and (c) What were your feelings about? `Ì was feeling that way about . . .''. After all participants had completed their responses they listened to the presentation of vignette 2 on the audiotape and subsequently provided a written response to the same questions about this story. The experimenter clarified any questions that participants had and directed them to the activity to ensure all sections were completed appropriately.

Measures Participants' written responses to the three questions for each vignette were transcribed verbatim correcting for obvious misspelling. Transcripts were segmented into T-units (minimal terminal units) defined as language units grammatically carrying meaning or communicating an idea (Hunt, 1965; McFadyen & Kitson, 1996). The text of the three standard questions was considered in judging a segment as a T-unit. The first step in the coding procedure was to identify all words, phrases or word groupings (Tokens) in each participant's transcript for each of the vignettes that constituted a T-unit. Measures of T-unit frequency, average number of words per T-unit (mean length of T-unit), and total number of words were calculated. Words in the standard question were not included as part of the T-unit measures. Coding categories and procedures Representational structure. All T-units containing a reference either to the participant's emotion or to the vignette protagonist's emotion were coded in terms of representational structure. Tokens were identified as emotion referents on the basis of: (a) lexical meaning which included all clear instances of emotion words (e.g., angry, sad, bad); (b) usage in context, such as words marked by I felt, I would have felt, I was, She felt, etc.; (c) the direct response to the first question ``Describe how you were feeling?'' `Ì felt . . .''; and (d) native speakers' (the judges') intuition of the token as a reference to an emotion. Judges used and could refer to the transcript context of the identified token for purposes of judgement or classification. Words, phrases or word groupings that referred to emotions of people other than the participant or the vignette

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protagonist were not coded. Each emotion referent was then coded within two broad categories: (1) an Evaluative category; and (2) a Referential category, and rated along three dimensions (Differentiation, Involvement, and Intensity). Evaluative category. The Evaluative category consisted of eight classes: (a) Referents whose hedonic tone is clearly negative were classified in one of three semantic classes (Anger; Sad; Fear; e.g., mad, cranky, like hitting him, sad, scared) or as other negative (Other, e.g., cheated, betrayed, distrust, confused); (b) Self-focused referents (Self-focused Negative) were those with a clear negative hedonic tone that focus on judgements of the participant's self (Lewis, 1993) (e.g., embarrassed, guilty, humiliated, ashamed); (c) Positive referents (Positive) included those whose hedonic tone is clearly positive (e.g., pleased, happy); (d) Self-focused referents (Self-focused Positive) were those with a clear positive hedonic tone that focus on judgements of the participants self (e.g., proud); and (e) Unclear referents (Unclear) were those that the raters were unable to judge as negative or positive (e.g., didn't care, felt nothing). Referential category. The Referential classification divided all language pragmatically used to describe emotional experience into nine classes grouped into four referential domains (Clore et al., 1987; Ortony et al., 1987, 1988). The external conditions or situational domain included terms that while not referring directly to an internal state have a high affective quality. These terms either described aspects of the person in relation to the world (e.g., feel abandoned, alone, let down, violated) (Objective Descriptions class) or evaluations of the person that may be elicited in others (e.g., feel helpless, foolish) (Subjective Evaluations class). Internal state emotion terms were divided into an expressive/ behavioural domain including references to bodily state (Physical class) and activities (Action class), such as hurt, tense, small, exhausted, like smashing her, as well as referents with a predominantly behavioural focus (Behavioural class, Affect/Behavioural class), and two subjective/experiential domains according to whether the referent focuses predominantly on affect (e.g., sad, mad, angry, annoyed) (Affective class), or on cognition (e.g., confused, distrusting) (Cognitive class), shame or regret (Affect-Cognitive class) (Clore, et al., 1987; Ortony et al., 1987). Dimensions. The Differentiation dimension referred to the degree to which the emotion referent was prototypical of the emotion or represented a more complex or mixed emotional state (Shaver et al., 1987). The least differentiated referents were the most prototypical and referred to ``basic'' emotion terms (e.g., sad, mad, scared), while the more differentiated referents were more complex (e.g., disappointed, furious, guilty). The Involvement dimension related to the perceived degree of commitment to the emotion referent and was identified by linguistic modifiers that suggest attitudes of confidence or


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doubtfulness with respect to the referent, such as modal auxiliary verbs (may/ might feel, would/could feel) and adverbs (obviously/possibly), objective versus subjective epistemic verbs (know I feel/think I feel), and linking verbs (is/seems) (Caffi & Janney, 1994). The final dimension, Intensity, related to the strength of the emotion referent identified either by lexical contrast (e.g., annoyed, angry, furious), or by adjectives or adverbs of degree (e.g., very, a little, etc.). Each of the three dimensions was rated on a 3-point Likert scale. For the Differentiation dimension, 1 was the least differentiated and 3 the most differentiated. For the Involvement and Intensity dimensions, unmarked emotion referents were given a rating of 2, while those marked by modifiers to lessen involvement or intensity were rated as 1 and those modified to increase involvement or intensity were rated as 3. Causal structure. The transcript for each vignette was searched for references to the cause of an emotion. Causal referents were identified by: (a) the presence of a causal connector (e.g., because); (b) a lexical causative (e.g., made me feel); (c) prepositional connector denoting a causal relationship (e.g., felt at, over, from, about, of, etc.) (Dirven, 1997); (d) direct elicitation in response to the questions or prompts about cause What made you feel that way?; or (e) any other reference judged to be linked causally to the emotion referent. As with emotion references, judges could refer to the broader transcript to judge a word or phrase as a causal referent and for categorising and rating. Each identified causal referent was coded for reference to the three types of causes. These were: (1) situational conditions where the causal referent referred to an external situation (i.e., the context, or action of another or self, e.g., because he told the secret; (2) causal referent indicating an internal state reflecting a desire identified by use of specific desire state word (e.g., I wanted to do well: I wished she'd kept the secret); and (3) causal referent indicating internal state reflecting a belief identified by use of specific knowledge state words (e.g., I thought friends could be trusted, I believe he wanted to get me in trouble). A fourth class of causal referent (Object) identified references to the target or object of the emotion (e.g., I was angry at him, at myself). Each causal referent was coded with the regard to the presence or absence of an External Attribution or Internal Attribution of the cause. In addition, the overall causal structure was rated on a 3 point Likert scale in terms of complexity from simple single dimensional cause to more complex multidimensional cause. Two Master's level psychologists acted as coders. They were trained in the Evaluative, Referential, and Causal category class and dimension definitions and were blind to the age and gender of the participants. Interrater reliability estimates: intraclass kappa (k), Pearson correlation (r) are included in Table 1. The judges showed strong agreement in their identification of overall production of words and of T-units and for the identification of referents as emotion and causal references. There was good agreement on the ratings of the Differentiation,

TABLE 1 Descriptive statistics and reliability estimates for variables derived from the coding of emotion and causal referents (N = 303) Vignette 1 Variable No. of emotion referents No. of causal referents No. of T-units T-unit length (words) Total no. of words

Vignette 2

M

(SD)

M

(SD)

r

3.24 4.49 8.89 6.07 52.99

(1.99) (1.81) (3.86) (2.19) (26.74)

2.99 4.63 8.62 5.83 49.56

(1.89) (1.85) (3.77) (1.80) (24.37)

.96 .94 .98 .99 .99

Vignette 1

Evaluative class Anger Sad Fear Other 7 Self-fc 7 Positive Self-fc + Unclear Referential class Objective Subjective Action Physical Affect/Beh. Behavioural Affective Affective/Cog. Cognitive Causal class Situation Belief Desire Object Attributional type External Internal Dimension Differentiation Involvement Intensity Complexity

Vignette 2

Frequency

Proportion

Frequency

Proportion

k

319 209 11 272 110 10 0 50

.325 .213 .011 .276 .112 .010 0 .051

270 93 220 221 70 9 2 20

.298 .103 .243 .244 .077 .009 .002 .022

179 26 29 0 0 27 660 34 19

.182 .027 .029 0 0 .028 .673 0.34 0.19

57 24 19 11 0 72 588 100 33

.063 .027 .021 .012 0 .080 .650 .110 .036

924 225 25 187

.678 .165 .018 .137

1010 153 38 204

.719 .109 .026 .145

0.82 1.00 1.00 1.00 0.67 0.66 1.00 1.00 0.85 0.76 0.71 0.76 1.00 1.00 n/a 0.27 0.94 0.76 0.15 0.84 0.85 0.85 0.82 0.84

1073 288

.788 .212

804 601

.572 .428

0.96 0.96

M

(SD)

M

(SD)

r

2.06 2.10 2.09 2.51

(0.57) (0.39) (0.35) (0.68)

1.94 2.15 2.04 2.63

(0.50) (0.33) (0.36) (0.64)

.97 .91 .98 .84

Other 7 = Other Negative; Self-fc 7 = Self-focused Negative; Self-fc + = Self-focused Positive; Affect/Beh. = Affect/Behavioural; Affect/Cog. = Affect/Cognitive.

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Involvement, Intensity, and causal Complexity dimensions. The range of intraclass kappas for the classes of the Evaluative category and the various Causal classes indicated moderate to good reliability for these classifications. The majority of classes in the Referential category also had moderate to strong reliabilities except for the Behavioural and Cognitive classes. All the disagreements for both these classes were about the classification of terms involving trust, which indicated difficulties in the specification of criteria for classifying such terms. The original Ortony et al. (1987) criteria for trust terms were re-examined and all such terms were specified as Cognitive except when used as a personal description (e.g., trustworthy), which was classified as Subjective. The referents were redefined with this clarification and complete interjudge agreement on such terms was subsequently obtained.

RESULTS Table 1 provides descriptive statistics for all variables coded or rated from the transcripts. A total of 981 and 905 emotions referents were coded for vignettes 1 and 2, respectively. As expected, the vast majority of emotion referents were of negative hedonic tone (93.9%, 96.7%, respectively) with most of these being classified into the three broad evaluative categories of Anger, Sad, or Fear (54.9%, 64.4%). However, a substantial percentage of negatively toned referents could not be classified in any of these three semantic groupings (27.6%, 24.4%). While a small group of these was general evaluative terms (e.g., bad, sick), most were not specific to the three basic semantic domains and suggest a more complex emotion (e.g., betrayed, worthless). There were small but notable percentages (11.2%, 7.7%) of self-focused negative referents (e.g., embarrassed, guilty). With regard to the referential structure, the majority of emotion terms were considered pure Affect focal terms (67.3%, 65.0%) with the remaining terms distributed in smaller proportions in the other referential categories particularly, for vignette 1 Objective description (18.2%), and for vignette 2 Affect/ Cognitive (11%) and Behavioural (8%). A total of 1361 and 1405 referents related to the cause of an emotion were identified for vignettes 1 and 2, respectively. The majority of causal referents described Situational factors as the cause of the emotion (67.8%, 71.9%). References to Beliefs in causal referents made up substantial percentages of the total (16.5%, 10.8%) while there were few references to Desire (1.8%, 2.7%). References to the intentional Object of the emotion make up substantial proportion (13.7%, 14.5%) of the causal referents. Vignette 1 primarily elicits referents that attribute the cause to external rather than internal factors (78.8% vs. 21.2%), while causal attributions for vignette 2 are distributed more evenly between external and internal factors (57.2% and 42.8%, respectively). Because the selection of participant did not sample evenly across the age range, age is treated as categorical variable (Age) with three levels with non-

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overlapping distributions: Group 1 (12±13 years) M = 12.96, SD = 0.32; Group 2 (14±15 years) M = 14.79, SD = 0.47; Group 3 (16±18 years) M = 16.78, SD = 0.73). Group 1 had 56 females and 52 males, Group 2, 76 females and 48 males, and Group 3, 50 females and 21 males. The distribution of age groups was not different for the two genders, w2 (2, N = 303) = 4.7, p > .05. The probability of occurrence of each category class, PropCat (i), for each participant was calculated as a proportion of each participant's total number of emotion referents for the Evaluative and Referential category classes and as a proportion of each participant's total number of causal referents for Causal category classes: PropCat(i) = Z (i)/SZ (n) where Z is the production frequency for a particular category class (i) and n is the total number of classes for that variable. This calculation controlled for differences between participants in the total number of emotion and causal referents allowing meaningful comparisons using parametric statistical techniques.2 The next step in the analysis was to undertake separate multivariate analyses of covariance for the three category variables (Evaluative, Referential, Causal categories) treating PropCat(i) as a repeated-measures variable with the number of levels equal to the number of classes and entering Age, Gender, and Vignette as independent variables. These profile analyses provided overall tests of the equivalence of each age group's, both gender's, and both vignette's profile on the Evaluative, Referential, and Causal category classes as well as the interactions of age, gender, and vignette (Tabachnick & Fidell, 1989). Because of nonequivalence of the variance-covariance structure on the PropCat (i) variables and considering the unequal sample sizes, Pillai's criteria were used to evaluate multivariate significance (Tabachnick & Fidell, 1989). Significant multivariate findings were followed by using 3 (Age) 6 2 (Gender) 6 2 (Vignette) univariate ANCOVAs to investigate the differences on specific Evaluative and Causal classes, and Referential domains. To control for verbal expressiveness and syntactic ability, the verbal measures (number of T-units, mean T-unit length) were entered as covariates in all analysis of variance/ covariance models. The analyses of age, gender, and vignette differences for the 2

Examination of the frequency histograms of these proportion variables with the normal distribution as an overlay indicated a moderate degree of divergence from normality for a number of them particularly those with high nonoccurrence for most participants (positive skewness). Following Tabachnick and Fidell's (1989) recommendation for transforming such divergence from normality, square root transformation were applied to the data. While there was generally improvement in normality for the transformed variables the improvement was not even across the variables. It was considered that other transformations were unlikely to produce interpretable variables with more consistent normality across the variables. The analysis, consequentially, used the square root transformed data.


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total number of emotion referents and causal referents produced, and for the mean ratings on the referential dimensions (Differentiation, Involvement, Intensity) and causal dimension (Complexity) were carried out using separate 3 (Age) 6 2 (Gender) 6 2 (Vignette) univariate ANCOVAs with number of T-units and mean T-unit length as covariates. Number of emotion and causal referents. Despite significantly more T-units and longer T-units being produced for vignette 1: F(1, 2950) = 19.20, p < .001; F(1, 295) = 5.45, p < .02, respectively, the two vignettes did not differ in the number of emotion referents elicited, F(1, 295) = 0.21, p > .64, or in the number of causal referents, F(1, 293) = 1.36, p > .24. There were no gender or age group differences for the number of emotion referents, F(1, 295) = 2.49, p > .11; F(2, 295) = 0.57, p > .56, or causal referents, F(2, 295) = 0.401, p > .54; F(1, 295) = 0.61, p > .57, produced when differences in general verbal fluency and syntactic abilities were taken into account. None of the interactions for the number of emotion referents or causal referents were significant. Evaluative category classes. After eliminating Positive and Self-focused Positive classes because of very low frequencies, PropCat(i)s for the remaining Evaluative classes (Anger, Sad, Fear, Self-focused Negative, Other Negative, and Unclear) were calculated for each participant for each vignette. A 3 (Age) 6 2 (Gender) 6 2 (Vignette) 6 6 (Evaluative class) MANCOVA was carried out using PropCat(i) as the dependant variable and entering Evaluative class and Vignette as repeated-measure variables with number of T-units and mean T-unit length as covariates. The results of the multivariate analysis indicated a significant difference between the vignettes, between males and females and between the age groups on their profiles over the six Evaluative classes: Pillai's trace = .070, F(5, 278) = 4.19, p < .001; Pillai's trace = .051, F(5, 278) = 2.99, p < .01; Pillai's trace = .109, F(10, 558) = 3.20, p < .001, for vignette, gender, and age group, respectively. The profile of Evaluative classes for the two vignettes, two genders, and three age groups are presented in Figur 1a±c, respectively. The profile for vignette 1 is dominated by Anger referents but there was a substantial proportion of Sad terms. While vignette 2 also elicited a substantial proportion of Anger referents, it is also characterised by a high proportion of Fear terms. The two vignettes differed significantly in terms of the proportion of Sad, F(1, 286) = 10.07, p < .002, and Fear, F(1, 286) = 14.47, p < .001, referents but not Anger referents, F(1, 286) = 2.37, p > .13, or terms in the other Evaluative classes, F(1, 287) = 0.015, p > .9; F(1, 286) = 1.76, p > .18; F(1, 286) = 0.361, p > .54, for Other Negative, Self-focused, and Unclear referents). As suggested by the complexity of the vignettes, data for both vignettes show substantial proportions of Other Negative and Self-focused Negative referents. Overall, these differences provide support for the validity and distinctiveness of the emotion eliciting material.

Figure 1. Mean proportion of emotion referents in each Evaluative class for each (a) Vignette, (b) Gender, and (c) Age Group.

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While keeping in mind the range and variability in the profiles of Evaluative terms for the two vignettes, in subsequent discussions they will be referred to as the anger/sad vignette and the fear vignette, respectively. The profiles for Evaluative classes for males and females (Figure 1b) reflect overall equivalence for girls and boys in the proportion of emotion referent in each Evaluative class: F(1, 286) = 0.01, p > .92 (Anger); F(1, 286) = 1.64, p > .20 (Fear); F(1, 286) = 0.25, p > .62 (Other Negative); F(1, 286) = 1.86, p > .17 (Self-focused); F(1, 286) = 0.26, p > .60, except for referents classed as Sad, F(1, 286) = 14.00, p < .001, with females producing a significantly higher proportion of this class. Girls produced a significantly greater proportion of Sad referents in response to both vignettes, t(293) = 4.08, p < .001; t(292) = 2.03, p < .04, respectively. A significant vignette by gender interaction in the profile analysis: Pillai trace = .053; F(5, 278) = 3.12, p < .009, indicated differences in the proportion of Anger, F(1, 286) = 9.17, p < .003, and Other Negative, F(1, 287) = 4.55, p < .04, emotion referents produced by males and females depending on the vignette. While the proportion of Anger referents produced by girls remained about the same for each vignette, boys produced a higher proportion of Anger referents than girls in response to anger/sad vignette, t(293) = 2.28, p < .03, and were notably, although not significantly, lower than girls in the proportion of Anger referents for the fear vignette, t(292) = 1.86, p < .06. Girls produced a significantly higher proportion of Other Negative referents than boys in response to the anger/sad vignette, t(294) = 2.46, p < .02, but were equivalent to boys on the fear vignette, t(292) = .814; p > .41. Analysis of the profiles for each Evaluative class for the three age groups (Figure 1c) indicate significant group differences for the overall production of: Anger, F(2, 285) = 5.44, p < .005; Sad, F(2, 285) = 3.34, p < .03; Other Negative, F(2, 286) = 4.12, p < .02; and Self-focused Negative, F(2, 285) = 3.27, p < .04, referents but not for Fear, F(2, 285) = 0.83, p > .43, or Unclear, F(2, 285) = 1.35; p > .26, referents. The age group differences in the Evaluative class profiles were independent of gender: Pillai trace = .051, F(10, 558) = 1.47, p > .14, and vignette, Pillai trace = .047, F(10, 558) = 1.36, p > .19. Contrast analysis indicated a significant linear relationship between the proportion of Sad and Self-focused negative referents and age group (Contrast est. = 7.057, p < .03; Contrast est. = 7.056, p < .008) with an increasingly smaller proportion of these type of referents produced with age. Similarly, a significant linear relationship between the proportion of Other Negative referents and age group indicating an increase in the proportion of this type of referent produced with age. The relationship of age group with the proportion of Anger referents was characterised by a significant quadratic relationship (Contrast est. = 7.099, p < .001) with 14- to 16-year-olds more likely to produce anger referents than the younger and older group. One way to examine the prediction of an increase degree of differentiation of anger and sad referents is to assess whether age increased the proportion of those

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producing an anger referent who did not also produce a sad referent, and, conversely, to assess whether age increased the proportion of those producing a sad referent who did not also produce an anger referent. While there were age group-related increases in the proportion of participants producing unique sad referents for the anger/sad vignette and unique anger referents for the fear vignette neither of these associations were significant: w2(2, 131) = 1.36, p > 5; w2(2, 152) = 4.90, p > .08, respectively. There was no indication of a change with age group in the proportion of participants producing unique anger referents for the anger/sad vignette or unique sad referents for the fear vignette: w2(2, 197) = 3.52; p > .17; w2(2, 131) = 2.03; p > .36; respectively. Referential category classes. The proportion of referents in each of the four Referential domains was calculated by summing the PropCat(i) that contribute to the domain that is, Situational (Subjective, Objective classes), Expressive/ Behavioural (Action, Physical, Affect/Behavioural, Behavioural classes), Affective (Affect), and Cognitive (Affect/Cognitive, Cognitive). A 3 (Age) 6 2 (Gender) 6 2 (Vignette) 6 4 (Referential domain) MANCOVA was carried out using PropCat(i) as the dependant variable and entering Referential domain and Vignette as repeated measure variables with number of T-units and mean Tunit length as covariates. The profile of mean proportion of referents in each Referential domain for the two vignettes, two genders, and three age groups are presented in Figure 2a±c, respectively. The results of the multivariate analysis indicated a significant gender and age group effect on the profiles over the four Referential domains: Pillai's trace = .033, F(3, 283) = 3.24, p < .02; Pillai's trace = .055, F(6, 568) = 2.67, p < .02, but no difference between the vignettes: Pillai's trace = .006, F(3, 283) = 0.59, p > .6. The profile difference was related to vignette for the age group effect: Pillai's trace = .063, F(6, 568) = 3.05, p < .01, but was independent of vignette for the gender effect: Pillai's trace = .016, F(3, 283) = 1.53, p > .2. Some of the gender differences are consistent with preferences in emotion ``display rules'' expectations based on gender stereotypes. Overall, males produced a significantly higher mean proportion of Expressive/Behavioural referents, F(1, 289) = 8.00, p < .01, than females. However, there was no corresponding female preference for Cognitive domain referents, F(1, 289) = 0.215, p > .64, and no differences for the Situational, F(1, 289) = 0.82, p > .36, or Affective, F(1, 289) = 0.318, p > .57, domains. Examining the age-dependent changes the univariate ANCOVAs showed significant age differences for the Situational, F(2, 288) = 6.10, p < .003, and Affective domains, F(2, 288) = 3.93, p < .02, but not for the Expressive, F(2, 288) = 0.30, p > .74, or Cognitive, F(2, 288) = 0.46, p > .63, domains. Contrary to predictions of a movement towards production of more subjectivist/ experiential terms with age, the post-hoc comparisons using ScheffeÂ criteria indicated an increase in the proportion of Situational referents with age and a

Figure 2. Mean proportion of emotion referents in each Referential domain for each (a) Vignette, (b) Gender, and (c) Age Group.

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decrease with age in the proportion in the Affective class. This age-dependent increase in the proportion of Situational referents was significant only for the anger/sad vignette, F(2, 288) = 4.76, p < .01. Differentiation, involvement, and intensity. The expected age-dependent increase in the degree of differentiation of emotion referents was confirmed, F(2, 285) = 4.89, p < .01. Post-hoc comparisons with ScheffeÂ adjustment indicated that the older adolescents produced emotion referents rated as more differentiated than the two younger groups. There were no differences for degree of differentiation for the vignettes, F(1, 285) = 1.80, p > .18, or genders, F(1, 285) = 0.001, p > .97. There were no overall gender effects for Intensity ratings, F(1, 285) = 0.09, p > .75, or significant vignette by gender, F(2, 285) = 3.01, p > .08, or age by gender interactions, F(2, 285) = 0.19, p > .82. Intensity ratings were also equivalent between the three age groups F(2, 287) = 1.17, p > .31. Emotion referents produced in response to the anger/sad vignette were rated as significantly more intense than those produced to the fear vignette, F(1, 285) = 4.48, p < .04. Ratings of involvement did not differ for vignette, gender or age group. Causal category classes and complexity. PropCat (i)s were calculated for each causal class and entered as a repeated-measures variable into a 3 (Age) 6 2 (Gender) 6 2 (Vignette) 6 4 (Causal class) MANCOVA was carried out using PropCat (i) as the dependant variable and entering Causal class and Vignette as repeated measure variables with number of T-units and mean T-unit length as covariates. Levels of causal class were Situation, Belief, Desire, and Object. There were no significant differences between vignettes, genders or age groups (see Figure 3a±c) on their profiles over the four Causal classes: Pillai's trace = .004, F(3, 284) = 0.34, p > .79; Pillai's trace = .013, F(3, 284) = 1.24, p > .29; Pillai's trace = .013, F(5, 570) = 0.64, p > .69 respectively. In addition, none of the interactions were significant: Pillai's trace = .012, F(3, 284) = 1.11, p > .34 (vignette by gender); Pillai's trace = .035, F(6, 570) = 1.67, p > .12 (vignette by age group); Pillai's trace = .030, F(6, 570) = 1.44; p > .19 (vignette by gender by age); Pillai's trace = .030, F(6, 570) = 1.46, p > .19 (gender by age group). There was an age-related effect for Attributional type in the 16±18-year age group producing a smaller proportion of external attributed causes, F(2, 286) = 3.50, p < .03. This difference was only evident for referents produced by boys to the anger/sad vignette, F(2, 286) = 3.64, p < .03. No other difference was significant for Attributional type, F(1, 286) = 0.04, p > .84, F(1, 286) = 1.29, p > .27, for gender and vignette, respectively. Females' causal referents overall were rated as significantly more complex than those of the boys, F(1, 286) = 11.49, p < .001. Complexity ratings did not differ between the age groups, F(2, 286) = 1.83, p > .16, or between the vignettes, F(1, 286) = 3.11, p > .08. There was a significant age group by vignette interaction for Complexity with an increase in

Figure 3. Mean proportion of causal referents in each Causal class for each (a) Vignette, (b) Gender, and (c) Age Groups.

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complexity with age group for the fear material, while the 16- to 18-year age group produced less complex accounts to the anger/sad material than the other two age groups, F(2, 286) = 4.73, p < .01.

DISCUSSION The semantic profiles of emotion language produced by participants in this study suggest that adolescents use emotion terms across a wide range of semantic domains and that blends and combination of emotion terms may be what is typical in their linguistic representation of emotions. While the profiles for the two vignettes corresponding broadly with what would be expected based on them being good exemplars of anger and fear events (Shaver et al., 1987), the high proportion of Sad referents to the material that contained the ``theoretical'' eliciting conditions for `ànger'' demonstrates once again the overlap of features eliciting anger and sadness (Stein et al., 1993). Similarly, the results with respect to the high proportion of Anger referents in response to both vignettes are consistent with those of other studies (Berkowitz & Heimer, 1989; Stein & Levine, 1990) that show that aversive events generally prime anger and hostility. In terms of the referential structure, the results show that while pure affective descriptors dominate in the emotion language of this age group they also frequently use situational, expressive/behavioural, and cognitive references to their emotions. Overall, adolescents' causal accounts of emotions are characterised by explanations that refer to the situation or context of the emotion eliciting conditions. However, the participants' frequent references to the experiencer's beliefs and to the intentional object of the emotions underline the subjective/ experiential perspective that they have in the accounting for the causes of emotions. The infrequent mention of desire terms, such as wants, needs, and goals, suggests that this subjective perspective is strongly cognitive rather than one that combines cognitive and motivational factors in representing the causes of emotions. If knowledge of motivational states is necessary for a full understanding of emotions (Harris, 1994; Stein et al., 1993), the linguistic evidence reported here suggests that spontaneous articulation of that knowledge is rarely achieved during adolescence. As expected, age-related developments in emotion language comparable to those described previously for younger age groups (Ridgeway et al., 1985; Wellman et al., 1995) continue into and across adolescence. In particular, the data show a change towards more differentiated (i.e., more complex and mixed linguistic representations of emotion) (Shaver et al., 1987) with age and towards using emotion referents that are not semantically domain-specific. However, the differences for the age groups in the complexity of their causal accounts were dependent on the type of material with fear material demonstrating the predicted age change while the oldest group produced the least complex explanation for the anger/sad vignette.


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There were also important developmental inconsistencies. Most interestingly and contrary to expectation from work with younger children (Donaldson & Westerman, 1986; Harris, 1994; Wellman et al., 1995) were the results indicting a move with age toward a more externalised focus in the representation of emotions at the expense of a subjectivist/experiential focus. These results included the change with age away from self-focused and sad referents and the increase with age in the proportion of situational referents and corresponding decrease in purely affective referents in response to the anger/sad material. While pure affect terms continue to be the dominant referential response to the anger/sad material in these age groups, the current data suggest that the change to a more externalised focus appears strong for adolescent boys but occurs for the girls as well. There are a number of possible explanations for a move to a more externalised language of emotions in adolescence. The evidence here could be accounted for by an increasing use of adolescent idiolects for emotion disclosure that rely on individual or shared experiences of emotion-relevant situations. However, it may also indicate a psychological distancing from emotional responses to certain types of situations for older adolescents, a more general retreat from a self-reflective or internalist stance in regards to certain emotions, or reflect greater inhibition of emotional self-disclosure for older adolescents, particular boys, in contexts of disclosure to adults. Alternatively, increasing success with age in using situational avoidance to manage negative emotions may result in a preference for representing emotions in situational terms. Regardless of their explanation, such findings raise important questions about whether and for whom the shift towards a more external focus in emotion language is maintained into adulthood. The findings also emphasise the importance of continuing to address the significant gaps in our knowledge of emotion language abilities in older children, adolescents, and adults for specific emotional domains as well as extending the range of discourse contexts. The current results highlight a number of differences that suggest genderspecific ``rules'' for talking about emotions. Many of these are consistent with previous research on gender differences in emotion expression and emotionrelated gender stereotypes (Brody, 1993; Brody & Hall, 1993). The first is in respect to gender differences in the fluency of production of emotion referents. Girls are overall more fluent in their production of emotion referents and causal referents than are boys. However, the data suggest that this difference is explained by girls' superior verbal expressiveness with gender equivalence in production fluency once girls' general advantage in verbal abilities is taken into account. The expectation of greater intensity in girls' emotion language was not supported by the current findings. There was the expected female preference for inner-directed emotion terms (Anderson & Leaper, 1998) with girls producing a higher proportion of sad referents than boys. Girls' semantic range of responses to the anger/sad vignette was more complex and less specific to the basic

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emotion semantic domains than that of boys who predominantly produced specific anger references. The finding that girls are likely to be less direct in their talk about emotional responses in situations prototypical of anger is understandable in terms of the gender difference in the acceptability of direct anger expression in girls compared to boys and also suggests that the early differences between boys and girls in talk about emotions (Cervantes & Callanan, 1998) persist into adolescence. In addition, emotion descriptions of boys are more strongly represented by expressive/behavioural referents than those of girls. However, the hypothesised cognitive preference in emotion language of girls was not evident in the present data. The results are consistent with the findings that males are less focused on the consequences and resolution of conflict than females (Whitesell et al., 1993) and have a higher priority for more immediate, behavioural representations of their emotional responses. The current findings provide little support for the inference from previous studies (Bamberg, 1997; Graham, 1988; Yirmiya & Weiner, 1986) that a welldefined ability to distinguish anger and sadness in linguistic terms develops relatively late in childhood. The pattern of results for unique usage in response to the anger/sad vignette shows that the oldest and youngest groups of children are equally likely to combine anger and sad referents and both groups more so than the intermediate age group. This pattern suggests either that anger/sad differentiation is well developed by age 12 or 13 years, or that simple production frequencies in semantic domains may not be sensitive gauges for assessing differentiation between anger and sad at the linguistic level in adolescents and that other markers are required. For example, Bamberg (1997) discusses more complex sad/angry markers, such as transitivity, and Hughes and Dunn (2002) demonstrate the varying use of subjective epistemic verbs in children's accounts of sadness and anger. A further problem of the classification of emotion language used was the ratings for the intensity and involvement dimensions. Although these measures were clearly specified and reliable, the ordinal scale may not have provided enough discrimination along the dimensions to detect important between group differences. In addition, while they are conceptually related to approach and avoidance in language, the particular features of these functional aspects of intensity and involvement markers are not well understood. Further specification of the relationship of intensity and involvement language devices to avoidance of emotion in language would involve examining putative linguistics indictors, such as modality, in more detail and investigating their occurrence in emotion language abilities of individuals who characteristically use avoidant strategies when regulating emotions. The main limitations of the current study are the threats to its external validity. First, there is the restriction to inferences because of the limited nature of the discourse task, writing about emotional responses to an imagined situation prompted by an adult's questions, and the limited range of emotion eliciting


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material. Second, is the limitation due to procedural constraints such as the single order of presentation of the vignettes which may impact on vignetterelated effects and their interaction with age group and gender. Third, without comparable data, it is not known to what degree the conclusions from the study are specific to this vignette content or also apply to emotion language produced in more interesting real life contexts, such as family or peer discourse about emotions, situation of high disclosure about emotions, for example, in counselling or psychotherapy, or in experimental or observational settings using other types of material, methods and procedures. At the same time, it is important to note that the vignette content was based on well-supported theoretical considerations (Shaver et al., 1987; Stein & Levine, 1990; Stein et al., 1993) and that the results document an extensive and diverse corpus of emotion referents and causal accounts. There is also no evidence elsewhere to suggest that discourse context factors, such as difference in procedures for experimentally eliciting emotion talk or different vignette content, impact on the semantic and referential structure of emotion language produced by adolescents or the agerelated or gender differences noted here. While the conclusions about adolescent emotion language in regard to type of emotion, gender differences, and age group-related changes need to be viewed as preliminary, the data from the current study provide a firm starting point for understanding the structure of emotion language in adolescence from which the role of the other discourse and individual difference factors can be investigated. Manuscript received 26 March 2002 Revised manuscript received 23 June 2003

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