Does Parent–Child Discussion of Peer Provocations Reduce Young Children's Hostile Attributional Bias?

Abstract

Two studies investigated whether parent-child discussion of peer provocations reduces young children's hostile attributional bias. Study 1 (N = 109, age 4-7)-an observational study-showed that parent-child discussion of nonhostile attributions (when reading a picture book) predicted reductions in children's hostile attributional bias from pre- to postdiscussion. Study 2 (N = 160, age 4-6)-an experimental study-showed that stimulating parents to discuss either nonhostile attributions or normative beliefs (vs. a control condition) reduced children's hostile attributional bias in response to hypothetical vignettes, but not in response to a staged peer provocation. These findings suggest that by framing social situations, parents may help their children perceive less hostility in their social worlds.

The Differing Roles of Cognitive Empathy and Affective Empathy in the Relationship Between Trait Anger and Aggressive Behavior: A Chinese College Students Survey

“…In the trait anger-aggressive behavior link, social information processing (SIP; Crick & Dodge, 1994;Dodge & Crick, 1990;Lemerise & Arsenio, 2000) assumes that the individual's interpretation and attribution of situational stimuli, and hostile cognition in particular, play a crucial role in the development of aggressive behavior. Some theoretical (Anderson & Bushman, 2002;Van Dijk et al, 2018;Wilkowski & Robinson, 2008) and empirical studies confirm the partial mediating effect that hostile cognition has in the trait anger-aggressive behavior link (Hou et al, 2017).…”

“…Trait anger, which is an important personality trait, is widely concerned with the prediction of aggressive behavior (Bettencourt, Talley, Benjamin, & Valentine, 2006). Studies show that although the anger-hostile cognition-aggressive behavior link is stable (Crick & Dodge, 1994; Van Dijk, Poorthuis, Thomaes, & de Castro, 2018; Wilkowski & Robinson, 2008), hostile cognition only has a partial mediating role (Hou, Jiang, Wang, & Li, 2017). There are still other personal or situational factors that influence the trait anger-aggressive behavior link.…”