Emotional displays as windows on the cultural world: open directions for developmental research

Abstract

The emotional expressions exhibited by others are crucial tools to retrieve relevant social information. This is particularly apparent in affective observation, where observing emotional reactions in third-party interactions enables observers to safely acquire cultural information essential for navigating complex social environments, especially when encountering unfamiliar and “culturally opaque” content. The idea that novel members of a social group, such as infants and young kids, can use others’ emotional expressions to assimilate unfamiliar content aligns with research indicating that humans, from a very early developmental stage, actively seek and selectively filter information to understand their environments (i.e., selective trust). However, much remains to be clarified regarding the developmental progression of the mechanisms involved in the strategic retrieval and utilization of emotional cues for cultural learning. Here, building upon a review of current theories of affective social learning and focusing on the active and selective exploration of the environment by naïve learners, we propose new directions for developmental research. Specifically, we highlight the need to investigate how the observation of emotional displays contributes to the acquisition of culturally relevant knowledge and to identify additional factors that may impact this process. The proposed research directions aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of the complex interplay between emotion and cognition in cultural learning throughout development.