Three Meta-Analyses of Children’s Emotion Knowledge and Their School Success

In this study, we examine the associations between children's emotion knowledge (recognition of emotions in faces and knowledge of external and internal causes for others' emotions) and three dimensions of school success: academic performance, peer acceptance, and school adjustment. Forty-nine studies with 6903 participants (aged from 3 to 12 years) and 185 effect sizes were analyzed in three random-effects multilevel meta-analyses. The mean effect sizes for the associations between emotion knowledge and academic performance, peer acceptance, and school adjustment were r = 0.32, r = 0.19, and r = 0.19, respectively. Among middle-class children, associations between emotion knowledge and academic performance and peer acceptance were stronger. The results of these meta-analyses demonstrate a robust overall relation between emotion knowledge and school success, underline the social contributions to school success, and emphasize the need to conduct further research on the pathways underlying the associations between emotion knowledge and school success. © 2017 Elsevier Inc.