Unveiling the Impact of Adult Emotion on Child Learning Motivation

It is widely known that children's emotions influence their learning motivation, but is their learning motivation also influenced by other people's expressed emotions? According to the theory of emotional contagion, individuals are affected by the emotions expressed by others. This study (N=100) explored the possibility adults' expressed emotions can affect children's learning motivation. We found that children's learning motivation increased when they received positive emotional expressions from adults towards a specific subject and decreased when they got negative emotional expressions. This research emphasizes the importance of expressed emotions, as a psychological mechanism, for promoting learning motivation from a social perspective. The results show a strong implication for educators' expressions of emotions in children's learning.