Preschool children's identification and understanding of mixed emotions

Children up to age 10 typically deny, on verbal tasks, that mixed emotions can occur. The experiments presented in this article explore whether partial knowledge of mixed emotions exists in the preschool years. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds, 5-year-olds, and adults chose mixed-emotion responses (e.g., “both happy and sad”) to describe mixed-emotion faces more than pure-emotion faces. In Experiment 2, 5-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, chose mixed-emotion faces and/or labels, to match emotionally mixed stories more than emotionally consistent stories. Thus, both 4- and 5-year-olds can identify mixed emotions, but only 5-year-olds can acknowledge their expression in appropriate situations. The results are discussed in terms of a two-step developmental sequence occurring between ages 4 and 6.