Emotional appraisal is a crucial stage of emotional processing that prepares for action (coping). During this process different responses are generated from the evaluation of emotional aspects of the stimuli. These variations may be due to the influence of individual characteristics. The literature points to temperament as one of the factors associated with differences in emotional appraisal and coping. This paper analyzes the relationship between the emotional appraisal of visual stimuli and temperamental characteristics, obtained through the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ). For this purpose, 198 preschoolers aged 4 and 5 assigned one of three possible emotional expressions to 15 images (negative, neutral and positive) and then compared the number of appraisals according to temperamental characteristics. Higher number of negative appraisals were found in the 4-year group compared to the 5-year group (p = .056, η² partial = .031), and of positive appraisals in the group with high effortful control score compared to the low score group (p = .020, η² partial = .029), suggesting an association between emotional assessment, age and effortful control. This result could be due to the fact that children were diverting they attention from the negative aspects of stimuli.

Keywords:
Emotional appraisal, temperament, emotional development, preschoolers, individual differences

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