Children's evaluations of provocation between peers

The present study examined children's evaluations of potentially conflictual situations between peers. Eight- and 11-year-olds evaluated two hypothetical target children in three scenarios which differed as to the intent of a provocative act (Accidental, Ambiguous, Hostile). In addition to grade and sex, relationship between targets was manipulated as a between-subjects variable with targets portrayed as either Best Friends Acquaintances, or Enemies. Children evaluated targets in terms of attributions of intentions, behavior response, affective state of targets, and mutual liking between targets. Results indicated that aggressor's intentions and victim's behavior response were evaluated as positive for the Accidental scenario and as negative for the Hostile scenario regardless of target relationship. When aggressor's intentions were unclear (e.g., Ambiguous), interactions between Best Friends and interactions between Acquaintances were evaluated as positive while interactions between Enemies were perceived as negative. Further, while all children predicted a negative response by the victim during the Hostile situation, younger children predicted the victim's response would be less negative than did older children. Children reported Best Friends and Acquaintances as liking each other more before the provocation situation started than after it occurred while liking between Enemies remained unchanged, thus indicating a belief that provocations may hurt a positive or neutral relationship. Targets were perceived to be in negative affective states during the Accidental and Ambiguous scenarios and the aggressor was perceived to be in a neutral affective state during the Hostile scenario. Results are discussed in terms of previous research on response to provocation and implications for research on children's peer conflicts. Aggr. Behav. 23:417–431, 1997. © 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Children's moral evaluations of reporting the transgressions of peers: age differences in evaluations of tattling

The way children evaluate the reporting of peers' transgressions to authority figures was investigated. Participants, ages 6-11 years (N = 60), were presented with a series of vignettes, each of which depicted a child who committed either a minor transgression (such as not finishing the vegetables at lunch) or a more serious transgression (such as stealing from a classmate). Participants were asked to evaluate the decision of a child observer who either did or did not report the transgression to a teacher. Younger children considered reporting to be appropriate for both types of transgressions, but older children considered reporting to be appropriate for major transgressions only. Results are interpreted with reference to (a) a changing peer culture in which the social cost of reporting transgressions increases and (b) a developmental change in children's cognitive capabilities.     

Perception and acceptance of evaluations by supervisors and peers

A survey of 200 employed graduate and undergraduate business students investigated differences in individuals’ acceptance and perceptions about peer evaluation vs. supervisor evaluation. Results showed that, compared to peer evaluations, acceptance of supervisor evaluations is higher, supervisor evaluations are perceived as more accurate and more trusted, supervisors are seen as having more qualifications to evaluate performance and more opportunities to observe performance, and suffer less from friendship bias.     

Perception and acceptance of evaluations by supervisors and peers

A survey of 200 employed graduate and undergraduate business students investigated differences in individuals’ acceptance and perceptions about peer evaluation vs. supervisor evaluation. Results showed that, compared to peer evaluations, acceptance of supervisor evaluations is higher, supervisor evaluations are perceived as more accurate and more trusted, supervisors are seen as having more qualifications to evaluate performance and more opportunities to observe performance, and suffer less from friendship bias.     

Behavioral orientations and peer-contact patterns of relationally aggressive girls

The present study was designed to assess the behavioral orientations and peer-contact patterns of relationally aggressive girls. Based on teachers' assessments of relational aggression, 16 preschool girls were assigned to either a relationally aggressive group or a nonaggressive group and then observed in a free play setting. Several aspects of their interactive behaviors, e.g., cooperative play and social conversation, and noninteractive behaviors, e.g., solitary play and transition, were observed. Analysis indicated the relationally aggressive group spent more time engaged in social conversation and transition and less time in cooperative play than did the nonaggressive group. Further, findings indicated that the relationally aggressive group spent more time with one particular peer than did the nonaggressive group.     

War and children's aggressive and prosocial behaviour

The aim of this study was to investigate whether, and how, extreme environmental influence, such as a war situation, can affect the development of children's aggressive and prosocial behaviour. A combined longitudinal–cross-sectional design was used in the study. Subjects were preschool children whose behaviour was rated on the Children's Aggressive and Prosocial Behaviour Rating Scale (?u?ul, Kereste? and Vlahovi?-?teti?, 1990) by their teachers. At the beginning of 1991 (before the war in Croatia started) the behaviour of two groups of children (one five years old and one six years old) was assessed. One year later, the younger group was assessed again. Another group of five-year-old children was also included and rated at the same time. Data were analysed according to age, sex and the time of measurements. The analyses of longitudinal data and cross-sectional comparisons support the conclusion that the war had a strong impact on the development of prosocial behaviour. In this period, children's prosocial behaviour had increased, while aggressive behaviour had not changed. Results are discussed in terms of developmental changes and the effects of war on children's behaviour.     

Acceptance and recall of written prosocial,neutral, and aggressive modeling cues1

Nine groups of 50 college students responded to acceptance (imitation) and recall questions after being exposed to one of three written modeling sequences (prosocial, neutral, or aggressive), each of which included one of three types of vicarious consequences (positive, neutral, or negative). The results provided strong support for the theoretical predictions regarding the influence of written vicarious consequences on acceptance and recall of modeled behaviors. Regardless of the type of story, positive vicarious consequences led to a significantly higher level of acceptance of the modeled actions than did negative vicarious consequences. The effects of neutral vicarious consequences on acceptance varied with the nature of the modeling story. Although positive and negative vicarious consequences generally led to higher levels of overall recall than did neutral vicarious consequences, patterns of overall recall varied across the three types of stories. Similarly, analyses of the three components (details, behaviors, consequences) of the overall recall measure indicated that recall patterns were inconsistent across the three types of stories. Thus, the results of the present study indicate the importance of considering both vicarious consequences and the situations in which these consequences occur. Furthermore, the effects of written vicarious consequences appear to parallel those of live and/or taped consequences. Continued investigation of these effects is highly warranted.     

Children's understanding of ambiguous idioms and conversational perspective-taking

The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that conversational perspective-taking is a determinant of unfamiliar ambiguous idiom comprehension. We investigated two types of ambiguous idiom, decomposable and nondecomposable expressions, which differ in the degree to which the literal meanings of the individual words contribute to the overall idiomatic meaning. We designed an experiment to assess the relationship between the acquisition of figurative comprehension and conversational perspective-taking. Our sample of children aged 5-7 years performed three conversational perspective-taking tasks (language acts, shared/unshared information, and conversational maxims). They then listened to decomposable and nondecomposable idiomatic expressions presented in context before performing a multiple-choice task (figurative, literal, and contextual responses). Results indicated that decomposable idiom comprehension was predicted by conversational perspective-taking scores and language skills, whereas nondecomposable idiom comprehension was predicted solely by language skills. We discuss our findings with respect to verbal and pragmatic skills.     

Mitigating aggression and promoting prosocial behavior in aggressive elementary schoolboys

The effects of four school-based interventions designed to decrease children's aggression and promote prosocial behavior were assessed. One hundred and four aggressive boys, ages 8–13, from ‘Behavior Disorder’ classrooms, were assigned to one of four training conditions: cognitive (self-control) training, behavioral (prosocial skills) training, combined cognitive-behavioral training, or attention/play training. School psychologists trained the boys in small groups for 10 1-h sessions. It was hypothesized that training in both cognitive and behavioral competencies would lead to the most behavioral improvement. Results indicated that, according to teacher report, those children receiving the cognitive-behavioral and attention/play interventions improved significantly more than those exposed to cognitive and behavioral training by decreasing their aggression and increasing their prosocial behavior immediately following the intervention. At 6-month follow-up, only those children exposed to the attention/play intervention remained significantly improved.     

Effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, physiological arousal, and prosocial behavior: a meta-analytic review of the scientific literature

Research on exposure to television and movie violence suggests that playing violent video games will increase aggressive behavior. A meta-analytic review of the video-game research literature reveals that violent video games increase aggressive behavior in children and young adults. Experimental and nonexperimental studies with males and females in laboratory and field settings support this conclusion. Analyses also reveal that exposure to violent video games increases physiological arousal and aggression-related thoughts and feelings. Playing violent video games also decreases prosocial behavior.     

Children's appraisals of sex-typed behavior in their peers

Four experiments evaluated the effect of variations in sex-typed behavior in hypothetical peers on children's ratings of friendship. In all four studies, the children were heterogeneous with regard to social class, ethnicity, and race. In Experiment 1, children (71 boys, 90 girls) in Grades 3–6 read five stories about a target boy and in Experiment 2 (102 boys, 137 girls) about a target girl who displayed four sex-typed behaviors that ranged from exclusively masculine to exclusively feminine. In Experiment 1, boys preferred the exclusively masculine boy most as a friend. With each addition of a feminine behavior (and corresponding subtraction of a masculine behavior), the friendship ratings became increasingly negative. In contrast, the girls preferred the exclusively feminine boy most as a friend and, with each addition of a masculine behavior, the friendship ratings became increasingly negative. In Experiment 2, the converse was found although girls' ratings of friendship were less sharply affected by the target girl's sex-typed behavior than was observed for boys' ratings in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, children (33 boys, 38 girls) in Grades K—2 were read three stories about a target boy, accompanied by detailed chromatic illustrations, whose four sex-typed behaviors were exclusively masculine, equally masculine and feminine, or exclusively feminine. The boys had significantly more favorable friendship ratings than the girls; however, in contrast to Experiments 1 and 2, the target boy's sex-typed behavior did not affect friendship ratings of either boys or girls. Experiment 4 (28 boys, 27 girls) repeated the procedure of Experiment 3 with children in kindergarten and Grade 1; in addition, the children made forced-choice friendship ratings for each of the three possible story pairs. In contrast to Experiment 3, boys' friendship ratings were affected by the target boy's sex-typed behavior, as observed in Experiment 1, but girls' friendship ratings were not. However, in the forced-choice situation, the boys significantly preferred the exclusively masculine boy whereas the girls significantly preferred the exclusively feminine boy. The results were discussed in relation to the influence sex-typed behavior has on modifying the effects of a peer's sex on affiliative preference and sex differences in appraisals of cross-gender behavior, including the concept of threshold effects.     

Parent,teacher, and peer ratings of physically abused and nonmaltreated Children's behavior

Behavior ratings by parents, teachers, and classmates of physically abused fourth to sixth graders, identified from the New York City Maltreatment Register, and case-matched classroom controls, showed substantial concurrence among informants: Parents and teachers both rated significantly more behavioral disturbance in the abused children, and peers' ratings were significantly correlated with adults' ratings, especially those by teachers. Children's exposure to spouse or partner physical abuse, which had a substantial prevalence among both child-abusing and control families, reduced the difference in disturbance ratings between children who were themselves physically abused and those who were not. Overall, we conclude that physically abused children show pervasive behavioral disturbance, in that parents, teachers, and classmates all see higher levels of behavior problems and lower levels of socially desirable behavior in them compared to their nonmaltreated peers.This research was supported in part by research grant R01MH38814 and Clinical Research Center grant MH30906 from the National Institute of Mental Health. The authors thank the New York City Child Welfare Administration, especially Terry Weiss, for facilitating access to the Maltreatment Register; the NYC Board of Education for access to schools; and the many participating superintendents, principals, and teachers. Some preliminary data were presented as a poster at the Meetings of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, New York, 1989.     

Friend versus foe: Neural correlates of prosocial decisions for liked and disliked peers

Although the majority of our social interactions are with people we know, few studies have investigated the neural correlates of sharing valuable resources with familiar others. Using an ecologically valid research paradigm, this functional magnetic resonance imaging study examined the neural correlates of prosocial and selfish behavior in interactions with real-life friends and disliked peers in young adults. Participants (N = 27) distributed coins between themselves and another person, where they could make selfish choices that maximized their own gains or prosocial choices that maximized outcomes of the other. Participants were more prosocial toward friends and more selfish toward disliked peers. Individual prosociality levels toward friends were associated negatively with supplementary motor area and anterior insula activity. Further preliminary analyses showed that prosocial decisions involving friends were associated with heightened activity in the bilateral posterior temporoparietal junction, and selfish decisions involving disliked peers were associated with heightened superior temporal sulcus activity, which are brain regions consistently shown to be involved in mentalizing and perspective taking in prior studies. Further, activation of the putamen was observed during prosocial choices involving friends and selfish choices involving disliked peers. These findings provide insights into the modulation of neural processes that underlie prosocial behavior as a function of a positive or negative relationship with the interaction partner.     

The effects of prosocial and aggressive videogames on children's donating and helping

We investigated the effects of a prosocial and an aggressive videogame on children's prosocial behavior. Third-, fourth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade boys and girls (N = 160) were randomly assigned to either a control condition or one of four treatment conditions. In two of the treatment conditions, children played a videogame with prosocial content either singly or cooperatively with another child. In the other two conditions, children played an aggressive videogame either singly or competitively. Subsequent levels of donating and helping were measured. A three-way analysis of variance indicated that older students donated significantly more than did younger students. Children who played either of the aggressive videogames donated significantly less than did those who played prosocial games by themselves. No significant effects were found for helping. Playing the prosocial videogame did not increase prosocial responding, but playing the aggressive videogame tended to suppress this behavior. The failure of the prosocial game to accelerate prosocial responding might be due to the relatively brief treatments used in this study and/or to the particular prosocial videogame utilized.     

Children's ability to make tentative interpretations of ambiguous messages

Consistent with prior research, 5- and 6-year-old children overestimated their knowledge of the intended referent of ambiguous messages. Yet they correctly revised their interpretations of ambiguous messages in light of contradicting information that followed immediately, while maintaining their initial interpretations of unambiguous messages (Experiment 1). Children of this age were able to integrate information over two successive ambiguous messages to identify the intended referent (Experiment 2). However, unlike 7- and 8-year-olds, they were no more likely to search for further information following ambiguous messages compared with unambiguous ones (Experiment 3). We conclude that although 5- and 6-year-olds' interpretations of ambiguous messages are not tentative at the outset, they can use source monitoring skills to treat them as tentative retrospectively, at least over short time spans.     

Low prosocial attachment, involvement with drug-using peers, and adolescent drug use: a longitudinal examination of mediational mechanisms.

The process of disengagement from prosocial entities (e.g., family and school) and either simultaneous or subsequent engagement with antisocial entities (e.g., friends who use drugs) is a critical contributor to adolescent drug use and delinquency. This study provides a series of formal mediation tests to demonstrate the relationship between poor family attachment, poor school attachment, involvement with friends who use drugs, and a student's own use of drugs. Results indicate that poor family attachment exerts its effect on drug use through poor school attachment and involvement with friends who use drugs. In addition, poor school attachment exerts its effect on drug use through involvement with friends who use drugs. The results of this study corroborate theories that suggest disengagement from prosocial entities is associated with involvement with antisocial entities and eventual involvement in drug use. Implications for prevention strategies are discussed.     

Adolescents' aggressive and prosocial behavior: associations with jealousy and social anxiety

The authors examined how relational aggression, physical aggression, and proactive prosocial behavior were associated with jealousy and social anxiety in a diverse sample of 60 middle school students. After the authors controlled for gender and race, jealousy predicted relational aggression and proactive prosocial behavior, but it did not predict physical aggression. Additionally, social anxiety predicted proactive prosocial behavior. Adolescents who were more jealous in their peer relationships also tended to engage in relational aggression and proactive prosocial behavior, and adolescents who were more socially anxious also tended to be proactively prosocial. The authors discuss the implications of these findings and suggest directions for future research.     

Children's perceptions of popular and unpopular peers: a multimethod assessment

Children's perceptions of popular and unpopular peers were examined in 2 studies. Study 1 examined the degree to which 4th-8th-grade boys and girls (N = 408) nominated the same peers for multiple criteria. Children viewed liked others as prosocial and disliked others as antisocial but associated perceived popularity with both prosocial and antisocial behavior. In Study 2, a subset of the children from Study 1 (N = 92) described what makes boys and girls popular or unpopular. Children described popular peers as attractive with frequent peer interactions, and unpopular peers as unattractive, deviant, incompetent, and socially isolated. In both studies, children's perceptions varied as a function of the gender, age, and ethnicity of the participants.