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Our primary goal was to examine the correspondence between children’s self‐reported use and knowledge of display rules for anger following hypothetical vignettes versus following live peer interactions. Our secondary goal was to investigate whether children’s self‐reported experience and self‐reported expression of anger were related their observed anger expression, considered an observational measure of use of display rules for anger. Participants were 274 second‐grade children. Children were first interviewed about their use and knowledge of display rules for anger in game‐playing situations depicted through hypothetical vignettes. Several months later, children interacted with a confederate in standardized games designed to simulate the vignettes and answered the same questions about display rules. Children’s responses were moderately related across the two contexts. However, following the live interactions, compared to the hypothetical vignettes, children reported feeling less anger, expressing less anger, intending to hide their anger more, and dissembling their anger more. In addition, there were differences in the quality and quantity of strategies for hiding anger that children generated across the two contexts. Observations of anger expression were not related to self‐reports of either the experience or expression of anger.
Parker et al. (Thu,) studied this question.