Cited by 1,247Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional DevelopmentEmotions and Moral BehaviorGender Roles and Identity Studies

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 289 of the 309 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 59 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

Gender differences in emotion expression in children: A meta-analytic review.

Open access
Chaplin, Tara M., Aldao, Amelia·2013·Psychological Bulletin

Abstract

Emotion expression is an important feature of healthy child development that has been found to show gender differences. However, there has been no empirical review of the literature on gender and facial, vocal, and behavioral expressions of different types of emotions in children. The present study constitutes a comprehensive meta-analytic review of gender differences and moderators of differences in emotion expression from infancy through adolescence. We analyzed 555 effect sizes from 166 studies with a total of 21,709 participants. Significant but very small gender differences were found overall, with girls showing more positive emotions (g = -.08) and internalizing emotions (e.g., sadness, anxiety, sympathy; g = -.10) than boys, and boys showing more externalizing emotions (e.g., anger; g = .09) than girls. Notably, gender differences were moderated by age, interpersonal context, and task valence, underscoring the importance of contextual factors in gender differences. Gender differences in positive emotions were more pronounced with increasing age, with girls showing more positive emotions than boys in middle childhood (g = -.20) and adolescence (g = -.28). Boys showed more externalizing emotions than girls at toddler/preschool age (g = .17) and middle childhood (g = .13) and fewer externalizing emotions than girls in adolescence (g = -.27). Gender differences were less pronounced with parents and were more pronounced with unfamiliar adults (for positive emotions) and with peers/when alone (for externalizing emotions). Our findings of gender differences in emotion expression in specific contexts have important implications for gender differences in children's healthy and maladaptive development.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1037/a0030737

Cites

289 of 289 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

0 of 59 cited sources checked · 0 supported · 0 flagged

Show all 88 claims

  • It may state two separate claims as one. 103
  • The quote only partly states this claim. 1
  • Probably not a substantial claim. 27
122 of 122
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Observed emotional expression is studied less often than self- or parent-report, and when observed, it does not consistently show gender differences.

    “Observations of emotional expression are less commonly conducted; and when they are, the observed emotions do not always show such consistent gender differences”
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    The effect sizes were sampled from a universe of possible sample sizes.

    “We assumed that our effect sizes were sampled from a universe of possible sample sizes.”
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    Effect sizes differ from the population by sampling error plus random variability among the studies.

    “as they assume that effect sizes differ from the population by sampling error plus random variability among the studies”
3 of 3

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Show all 309 references

20 of the 309 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 801–900 of 1,247

Metadata

Authors
Chaplin, T. M., & Aldao, A.
Affiliations
Yale University (US)
Corresponding author
Chaplin, Tara M.
Venue
Psychological Bulletin
Published
2013
Volume
139
Issue
4
Pages
735-765
ISSN
  • 0033-2909 (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-1455
OpenAlex
W2156233592
Cited by
1,247
References
309
Citations by year
2026: 153 · 2025: 161 · 2024: 133 · 2023: 123 · 2022: 104 · 2021: 103 · 2020: 139 · 2019: 76 · 2018: 69 · 2017: 71 · 2016: 46 · 2015: 38 · 2014: 22 · 2013: 7
FWCI
24.66
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Psychological Bulletin (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
National Institutes of Health (K01DA024759)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Emotions and Moral Behavior
  • Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender Roles and Identity Studies
Keywords
gender differences, emotional expression, children, facial expressions, vocal expression, behavioral expression, positive emotions, age differences, interpersonal context, parent-child interaction, peer interaction, adolescence, middle childhood, toddlerhood
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Age Factors, Analysis of Variance, Child, Child Behavior, Child Development, Child, Preschool, Emotions, Female, Gender Identity, Humans, Infant, Male, Models, Theoretical, Regression Analysis, Sex Characteristics, Socialization, Adolescent Development

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-09-28, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).

A second model labelled each claim on 2026-09-28 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review