Gender Differencesin Social and Emotional Functioning and Peer Relationship in Taiwanese School Children

Authors:

Ching-Yu Huanga, April Chiung-Tao Shena, Hsi-Sheng Weic, Jui-Ying Fengb, Yi-Ping Hsiehb, Hsiao-Lin Hwaa, Joyce Feng Yena 

aNational Taiwan University, Taiwan

bNational Cheng Kung University, Taiwan

cNational Taipei University, Taiwan

Gender differences have long been documented in various aspects of children’s social development, including peer relationships (e.g., see Rose and Rudolph, 2006, for a review). However, research on gender difference on Chinese children’s peer relationship remain sparse, and even less studies have examined how Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence influence children’s peer relationship in non-Caucasian populations.

Seven hundreds twenty six Taiwanese school children (4th grade in elementary school, average 10 years old) self-reported their emotional and social intelligence, peer relationship quality, positive school experience, bullying victimization and bullying perpetration experiences. The results revealed significant gender differences in children’s peer relationship quality, bullying victimization and perpetration. Girls reported higher peer-relationship quality than boys did (F(1, 697) = 15.536, p < .001), whereas boys reported higher scores of both bullying victimization (F(1, 697) = 11.056, p < .001) and perpetration (F(1, 697) = 8.015, p < .01) than girls did. Further correlation analyses revealed that boys and girls showed the same correlation patterns for most of the variables (see Table 1). However, there were some differences in these associations: for boys, emotional intelligence was negatively associated with bullying perpetration (r= -.113, p <.05); whereas for girls, both emotional intelligence (r= -.106, p <.05) and social intelligence (r= -.136, p <.01) were negatively associated with bullying victimization.

These findings revealed novel findings in Taiwanese children’s social and emotional development,expanding our knowledge in this research field. Implications of these research findings will be further discussed in the paper.