Hostile Attribution of Intent and Aggressive Behavior: A Meta‐Analysis

Abstract

A meta-analytic review was conducted to explain divergent findings on the relation between children's aggressive behavior and hostile attribution of intent to peers. Forty-one studies with 6,017 participants were included in the analysis. Ten studies concerned representative samples from the general population, 24 studies compared nonaggressive to extremely aggressive nonreferred samples, and 7 studies compared nonreferred samples with children referred for aggressive behavior problems. A robust significant association between hostile attribution of intent and aggressive behavior was found. Effect sizes differed considerably between studies. Larger effects were associated with more severe aggressive behavior, rejection by peers as one of the selection criteria, inclusion of 8-to-12-year-old participants, and absence of control for intelligence. Video and picture presentation of stimuli were associated with smaller effect sizes than was audio presentation. Staging of actual social interactions was associated with the largest effects. The importance of understanding moderators of effect size for theory development is stressed.

Real‐time hostile attribution measurement and aggression in children

“…This is evidenced in the relation between aggression in children and problems at each SIP step including (1) attending to more aggressive cues (Dodge, Lochman, Harnish, Bates, & Pettit, 1997), (2) interpreting situational cues as more hostile (Orobio de Castro et al, 2002), (3) setting more aggressive social goals (e.g. Erdley & Asher, 1996), (4) thinking of fewer prosocial behavioral responses (e.g.…”

“…Children making hostile attributions about the actions of others are thought to be more likely to formulate a corresponding reactive response -specifically, reactive aggression (Dodge et al, 1997;Orobio de Castro et al, 2002).…”

“…staging an interaction, watching a video, reading hypothetical vignettes) are associated with varying effect sizes of the relation between hostile attribution bias and aggression (Orobio de Castro et al, 2002). Most measurement of hostile attribution bias has relied on narrative stimuli involving presenting a story or scenario to a child verbally and asking for his or her interpretation of the event using open-ended questions (e.g.…”

“…and .44 (Orobio de Castro et al, 2002). Another method of measuring hostile attribution bias relies on videos or pictures to portray scenarios that children are then asked about (e.g.…”

“…Literature suggests the largest effect size between aggressive behavior and hostile attributions is found when hostile attributions are measured using staged situations rather than commonly used vignette-based measures (Orobio de Castro et al, 2002), but few, if any, studies have investigated hostile attributions as they occur in real-time. The current study uses an interactive, video racing game along with a verbal and nonverbal response procedure to measure hostile attributions while children are playing against a presumed peer.…”