TreasureX Researchnber.wpTextbooks Teach a Wide Range of Emotions — Their Pictures Don't
Anjali Adukia, Matthew Bonci, Paula Dastres Gallardo, Emileigh Harrison, Jake Nicoll, Teodora Szasz · September 30, 2026
A new NBER working paper by Adukia, Bonci, Dastres Gallardo, Harrison, Nicoll, and Szasz asks a simple but overlooked question: what emotions do children actually encounter in the materials they read at school? Using machine learning and generative AI to analyze public-school textbooks and children's literature, the authors compare the feelings described in the written text with the feelings shown in the illustrations on the same page.
The gap is striking. While the words expose children to a broad emotional spectrum — sadness, fear, anger, joy — the images overwhelmingly depict only happiness and calm. On nearly half of all pages, the emotions in the text and the emotions in the pictures do not overlap at all. This pattern holds across different eras, settings, and character identities.
The authors also find evidence that market forces play a role. Household purchases and library inventories suggest that buyers favor books with "positive" cover imagery, which may push publishers to narrow the emotional range children see.
Why it matters: Emotional intelligence is part of human capital — it shapes how people cooperate, negotiate, and manage stress. If visual content systematically filters out difficult emotions, schools may be undercutting the very skills they aim to build. For investors, this points to a subtle demand-driven bias in children's media and educational publishing: what sells may not be what best prepares kids for adult life.
Source: National Bureau of Economic Research — https://www.nber.org/papers/w35789#fromrss
Educational content only, generated with AI assistance from public research abstracts. Not investment advice.