(How) Do We Teach Emotions?

Anjali Adukia, Matthew Bonci, Paula Dastres Gallardo, Emileigh Harrison, Jake Nicoll and Teodora Szasz

No 35789, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Emotional intelligence constitutes a key component of human capital, shaped partially by educational materials. Using machine learning and generative AI tools, we examine emotional content in public-school textbooks and children’s literature. A stark mismatch emerges: text exposes children to a broad emotional range, but images overwhelmingly depict happiness and calm, regardless of emotions described in text on the same page. Nearly half of pages show zero overlap between the emotions described in text and those shown in images. This pattern persists across time, contexts, and identities. Household purchases and library inventories suggest content may be endogenously shaped by consumer demand favoring “positive” cover imagery, implying market forces narrow the emotional landscape children encounter.

JEL-codes: I20 I21 I24 L82 Z11 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-neu
Note: ED
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w35789.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35789

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w35789
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().