American, Russian Children's Stories Show Different Depictions Of Emotions: Study

How do parents and the literature in Russia and the U.S. differ in terms of emotions they depict? Russian parents are more likely to read to their children stories that depict negative "challenging" emotions, a study has found.

There are cultural differences in the way "different models of emotions" are fostered in the U.S. and Russia, the researchers of a study, published in the journal Emotion, noted. For instance, in the U.S., there is quite a bit of emphasis on the more positive emotions and less emphasis on negative emotions compared to Russia, according to the study.

"Little is known about the ways in which parents transmit these models of emotions to children," the researchers wrote. "Cultural products, such as popular storybooks, may serve to provide important tools of transmission."

"Because the stories we read and hear as children often inform which emotions we value, we wanted to see how those stories might differ across these two cultures," study corresponding author, Yulia Chentsova-Dutton, said in the North Carolina State University news release.

To find out, the researchers conducted two studies. In the first, they recruited 322 parents with children under 10 years old. There were three groups of parents, with one group having parents who were born and living in the U.S., and another with parents who were born in Russia but are living in the U.S., and the third group with parents who were born and living in Russia.

The parents were asked to describe the extent to which the books that they recently read to their children portrayed 10 different emotions, which included positive and negative ones. Here, they found no differences in terms of the depictions of positive emotions, but the Russian parents described reading books with more negative emotions compared to the U.S. parents. The Russian-American parents were "in between."

"These differences were partially due to parental beliefs about sadness," the researchers wrote. As the university explained, the researchers found that Russian parents valued sadness more than the U.S. parents did.

"Russian culture seems to value all emotions — including negative emotions — and it is important to learn from these emotions," Chentsova-Dutton said, as per the news release.

In the second study, the researchers looked directly at popular children's books from the U.S. and Russia, comparing both verbal and non-verbal descriptions of emotions. Sure enough, they also found some rather interesting differences, with Russian children's books representing a "wider range of emotions." This was found even after accounting for the differences in the text length and number of illustrations in the books, the university noted.

"U.S. books verbally referenced anger and sadness and depicted happiness, anger, and fear faces less frequently than Russian books," the researchers wrote.

According to the researchers, the results of the study suggest that American and Russian parents expose their children to "different depictions of emotions," especially negative ones, with Russian parents being more willing to engage with their young children about the more "challenging emotions."

As for how the children themselves interpret these depictions of emotions, further studies are needed, the researchers noted.