Verbal framing and statistical patterns influence children’s attributions to situational, but not personal, causes for behavior

Abstract

Adults from Western cultures attribute others' behavior to personal causes more readily than situational causes; however, little research has explored the developmental origins of this attributional bias. Research has shown that children can use both the statistical patterns present in observed behavior, as well as the verbal framing of the behaviors, to infer personal causes.However, research has not explored whether children also use these factors to infer situational causes. The present study examined the impacts of statistical patterns and verbal framing on four-and six-year-old children's (n = 218) attributions to personal and situational causes for behavior, as assessed by their explanations for characters' interactions with toys. In a factorial design the statistical pattern of characters' behaviors suggested either a personal or situational cause (or neither), and the experimenter's verbal framing of the behaviors suggested either a personal or situational cause (or neither). Across age groups, children showed a bias toward providing personal explanations. Both statistical pattern and verbal framing influenced causal attributions, but both impacts were asymmetric such that situational cues increased situational explanations relative to neutral cues, but there was no difference in children's explanations following personal and neutral cues. These results suggest that verbal framing and statistical patterns impact children's developing social causal attributions, specifically with respect to situational causes, and also that a personal attribution bias emerges early in development.

Developmental shifts toward structural explanations and interventions for social status disparities

“…In particular, Peretz-Lange and Muentener (under review) found that extrinsic framing reduced young children's personal attributions relative to both intrinsic and neutral framing, which yielded similar rates of attributions. We replicated this asymmetric impact of framing among young children, supporting the idea that young children hold a default bias toward personal attributions that can be disrupted by extrinsic framing, but not enhanced by intrinsic framing (see also, Peretz-Lange & Muentener, 2019).…”

“…Research on children's causal reasoning has used a variety of methods to assess children's attributions, including children's free-response explanations ("Why did Josie play on the diving board?" Peretz-Lange & Muentener, 2019;Seiver, Gopnik, & Goodman, 2013; "Why did Sally get hungry? " Harris, German, & Mills, 1996; "Why is this block staying straight?…”

Verbally Highlighting Extrinsic Causes of Novel Social Disparities Helps Children View Low-Status Groups as Structurally Disadvantaged Rather Than Personally Inferior

“…In other words, structural attributions might enable children to causally account for observed disparities while avoiding personal attributions and their pernicious consequences. Optimistically, emerging research supports the idea that even young children are capable of forming structural attributions (Hussak and Cimpian, 2015;Vasilyeva et al, 2018;Peretz-Lange and Muentener, 2019;Yang et al, 2021). The present study contributes to this emerging research area in a few ways: First, the research on structural attributions often involves explicitly telling children about the cause of a given disparity (e.g., Hussak and Cimpian, 2015;Sutherland and Cimpian, 2019;Rizzo et al, 2020;Dunlea and Heiphetz, 2021).…”

“…We are motivated by the research showing that children form and revise their causal knowledge in social collaboration with parents and caregivers (see Legare et al, 2017 for a review), and that children can learn and generalize new types of explanations when provided with examples of them from an adult (Walker et al, 2015;Lombrozo et al, 2018). In particular, we draw from research demonstrating that verbally highlighting extrinsic causes can disrupt children's default tendency to form personal attributions (Vasilyeva et al, 2018;Peretz-Lange and Muentener, 2019). For example, Peretz-Lange and Muentener (2019) verbally framed characters' behaviors in either intrinsic, extrinsic, or neutral terms, and then assessed preschoolers' attributions for the behaviors.…”

“…In particular, we draw from research demonstrating that verbally highlighting extrinsic causes can disrupt children's default tendency to form personal attributions (Vasilyeva et al, 2018;Peretz-Lange and Muentener, 2019). For example, Peretz-Lange and Muentener (2019) verbally framed characters' behaviors in either intrinsic, extrinsic, or neutral terms, and then assessed preschoolers' attributions for the behaviors. They found that framing impacted attributions asymmetrically; children provided similarly high rates of personal attributions in the intrinsic and neutral framing conditions, in line with their default attributional tendencies, but provided significantly fewer attributions in the extrinsic framing condition.…”