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What Made Sahar Scared?: Imaginary and Realistic Causes in Palestinian and American Children’s Concept for Fear

What Made Sahar Scared?: Imaginary and Realistic Causes in Palestinian and American Children’s... Young children associate fear with monsters, ghosts, and other imaginary creatures more than with real threats to safety, such as robbers or bullies – at least in Western societies. Cross-cultural studies are rare, are limited to older children, and have not asked if the role of the imagination extends to emotions other than fear. In this study, young Palestinian and American children (60 in each group, 3–7 years, age- and sex-matched) were asked to tell stories in which they generated a cause for fear as well as happiness, sadness, anger and surprise. Imaginary creatures were rarely cited as the cause of any emotion other than fear, but were cited frequently for fear by both Palestinians and Americans. There was also a cultural difference: Palestinians generated significantly fewer imaginary and more realistic causes for fear than did Americans. Thus, imaginary causes are a part of Palestinian children’s fear concept, but imaginary causes are not primary as they are for American children; for Palestinian children, realistic causes are primary in their fear concept. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Cognition and Culture Brill

What Made Sahar Scared?: Imaginary and Realistic Causes in Palestinian and American Children’s Concept for Fear

Kayyal, Mary H.; Widen, Sherri C.
Journal of Cognition and Culture , Volume 15 (1-2): 32 – Mar 17, 2015
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References (33)

Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
1567-7095
eISSN
1568-5373
DOI
10.1163/15685373-12342139
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Young children associate fear with monsters, ghosts, and other imaginary creatures more than with real threats to safety, such as robbers or bullies – at least in Western societies. Cross-cultural studies are rare, are limited to older children, and have not asked if the role of the imagination extends to emotions other than fear. In this study, young Palestinian and American children (60 in each group, 3–7 years, age- and sex-matched) were asked to tell stories in which they generated a cause for fear as well as happiness, sadness, anger and surprise. Imaginary creatures were rarely cited as the cause of any emotion other than fear, but were cited frequently for fear by both Palestinians and Americans. There was also a cultural difference: Palestinians generated significantly fewer imaginary and more realistic causes for fear than did Americans. Thus, imaginary causes are a part of Palestinian children’s fear concept, but imaginary causes are not primary as they are for American children; for Palestinian children, realistic causes are primary in their fear concept.

Journal

Journal of Cognition and Culture – Brill

Published: Mar 17, 2015

Keywords: Culture; emotion; fear; situational causes

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