The Role of Social Goals in Bullies' and Victims' Social Information Processing in Response to Ambiguous and Overtly Hostile Provocation

Understanding what social goals are associated with bullying and victimization behaviours, even after allowing for biases in interpretation of and affective responses to social events, is critical for understanding the socio‐behavioural profile of bullies and victims. In the present study, 181 nine‐ to ten‐year‐olds' affective responses, attribution of intent, and social goals were assessed in the context of a series of ambiguous and overtly hostile provocation vignettes. Results showed that even after allowing for other social information processing biases, social goals were meaningfully associated with bullying and victimization scores. Bullying was inversely associated with relationship‐building goals, and positively associated with goals to be assertive over the provocateur when provocation was overtly hostile. Being victimized was associated with having submissive goals even when provocation was ambiguous and after accounting for attribution of hostile intent. Findings are discussed in light of theoretical and practical implications.     

Parental Control and Affect as Predictors of Children's Display Rule Use and Social Competence with Peers

Seventy‐six fourth‐grade children and their parents participated in a study of the linkages among parental control and positive affect, children's display rule use, and children's social competence with peers. Using observational measures of parental behavior and children's display rule use, it was found that parental positive affect and control were related to children's display rule use (including both positive and negative responses). Moreover, the links between parental affect and control and children's social competence one year later (as rated by teachers and peers) were found to be mediated by children's display rule use. Finally, fathers’ behavior was found to be particularly important in the prediction of children's display rule use. The importance of fathers in children's social and emotional development and the importance of examining multiple parental behaviors are discussed.     

The Cost of Being Mother's Ideal Child: The Role of Internalization in the Development of Perfectionism and Depression

The study investigated how children's willingness to internalize mothers' values affected the associations between mothers' performance goals for their children and the development of children's perfectionism and depression. The participants were 59 Hong Kong fifth graders and their mothers. The results showed that internalization, as a child factor, moderated the association between mothers' performance goals for their children and children's self‐oriented perfectionism, but not socially prescribed perfectionism. Children's internalization also moderated the association between mothers' performance goals for their children and children's depression. Among the children who were more willing to internalize their mothers' values, their mothers' performance goals for them were correlated positively with their self‐oriented perfectionism, but negatively with their depression. Paradoxically, internalization appeared to be a risk and also a protective factor in the psychological well‐being of children.     

Normative Trends in Children's Perceptions of Availability and Utilization of Attachment Figures in Middle Childhood

Two studies addressed the normative aspects of attachments to mothers and fathers in middle childhood. Using both cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons, we tested the hypothesis that children show no changes in perceptions of availability of attachment figures across the later middle childhood years, but do utilize attachment figures less at older ages. The first study included a cross-sectional comparison of third and sixth graders, and the second study was a follow-up on the third graders when they were in fifth grade. Both studies suggested a decline in utilization, but not in perceptions of availability of attachment figures within the later middle childhood years. Study 1 also demonstrated that children turn to parents to meet attachment needs, and peers to meet companionship needs. Study 2 examined individual differences in attachment by exploring how changes in attachment to mothers from third to fifth grade were related to children's social adjustment at fifth grade. Increases in perceptions of availability forecast better emotional and behavioral regulation at fifth grade. Changes in utilization of attachment figures showed both linear and nonlinear relations to regulation.     

Children's Interpretations of Ambiguous Provocation From Their Siblings: Comparisons With Peers and Links to Relationship Quality

This study investigated how six‐ to eight‐year‐old children interpret ambiguous provocation from their siblings. In particular, we examined how children's attributions of their siblings' intent (1) differed from those for their peers, (2) varied as a function of the structural features of the sibling relationship, and (3) were associated with the affective qualities of the sibling relationship. A total of 121 children were presented with ambiguous provocation scenarios in which three groups of agemates were described as the perpetrators of harm (siblings, friends, and disliked peers). Scenarios were designed to assess children's attributions of hostile, instrumental, and accidental intent. Children attributed more hostile intent to disliked peers than to siblings and less hostile intent to friends than to siblings. Accidental and instrumental intent attributions were equally likely for friends and siblings but less common for disliked peers. Children attributed more hostile intent to older siblings, and more instrumental intent to laterborn siblings who were chronologically younger. Children's attributions of siblings' intent were related to both parents' and children's reports of the affective features of siblings' interactions. Results provide new insight into how children's construals of others' actions are grounded in the unique features of their relationships with particular interaction partners.     

Victimization Within Mutually Antipathetic Peer Relationships

Children's victimization experiences within relationships characterized by mutual animosity were examined among 210 6th‐ and 7th‐grade boys and girls. Participants reported that a greater proportion of mutual antipathies, relative to other peers, victimized them. Moreover, the receipt of victimization within antipathetic relationships was greater when the partner in the relationship was aggressive, physically strong, non‐victimized and had low levels of internalizing problems. Perceptions of victimization and levels of maladjustment were also found to be more strongly associated with victimization from mutual antipathies than with victimization from other peers. Together, these findings highlight the importance of studying victimization in the context of antipathetic relationships and contribute to an emerging literature on the developmental significance of these relationships.     

Emotion Knowledge Skills in Low-income Elementary School Children: Associations with Social Status and Peer Experiences

This short‐term longitudinal study examined relations between emotion knowledge and social functioning in a sample of low‐income kindergarten and 1st graders. Individual differences in spontaneous emotion naming and emotion recognition skills were used to predict children's social functioning at school, including peer‐nominated sociometric status, and child self‐reports of negative experiences with peers in school (peer victimization and rejection). Children who had greater emotional vocabulary and recognized emotions more accurately had better outcomes in all areas, and many of the associations between fall emotion knowledge skills and spring social functioning outcomes held after covarying grade and children's previous status with regard to these outcomes. Results are discussed with regard to implications for prevention and intervention programs (e.g., the PATHS curriculum) that focus on teaching emotion knowledge skills in order to foster high‐risk children's social competence.     

Young Children's Persuasion in Everyday Conversation: Tactics and Attunement to Others' Mental States

Young children's persuasion tactics, and how these reflected attunement to others' mental states, were explored in archived longitudinal samples of transcribed at‐home conversations of four children, three to five years old. Over 87,000 utterances were examined to identify conversation ‘chunks’ involving persuasion; 1,307 chunks were then coded for who initiated the persuasion, the persuader's goal, tactics employed, the presence of cues about others' beliefs and desires, and whether children attended to such information. Analyses suggested that persuasion exchanges were initiated similarly by children and adults, were stable in frequency and length across time, and involved a limited set of persuasion tactics. Children's attempts to change beliefs increased although explicit mental‐state cues were only rarely available. When such cues were available, children more often than not altered their tactics. Implications for our understanding of children's developing social cognition and theory of mind, as well as the limitations of conversational analysis, are discussed.     

Patterns of Social Support in the Middle Childhood to Early Adolescent Transition: Implications for Adjustment

Children's social networks often include close family members, extended family members, and friends, but little is known about interindividual differences in the patterning of support from these sources. In this study, we used person‐oriented analyses to differentiate patterns of support for children undergoing the transition to adolescence. Social network and adjustment data were collected for an ethnically diverse sample of 691 fourth‐ and sixth‐grade children, with a two‐year follow‐up. Cluster analyses identified one pattern of support from both close family members and friends, a second pattern of support from both close and extended family members, and a third pattern of support primarily from close family members alone. Participants receiving support from close family in combination with either extended family or friends were better adjusted than were those without multiple support resources. The results suggest that a meaningful typology of children's social networks can be developed.     

How socialization goals and peer social climate predict young children's concern for others: Evidence for a development shift between 2 and 4 years of age

Children's concern for others is shaped through socialization, but current theories make different predictions as to how and when in development this socializing occurs. Here we found that mothers' prosocial socialization goals (SGs) predicted concern for others in 2‐year‐old (n = 804) and 4‐year‐old (n = 714) children. In contrast, preschool teachers' SGs predicted concern for others only for 4‐year‐old children. In addition, a positive social climate among classroom peers predicted 4‐year‐olds' prosociality. These results suggest that the nuclear family environment impacts toddlers' concern for others before the broader social environment shapes their prosociality at preschool age.     

I’m respectful. Why don’t they like me? Evaluator and gender effects of showing respect and children’s social competence

Despite extensive research on the importance of conceptualizing respect, little is known about how respect recipients and peer onlookers evaluate showing respect. Few studies have examined how such evaluations affect children's peer relations across four levels of social complexity (individual, interactions, relationships, and group), and few have assessed how gender influences the evaluations of showing respect to peers on peer social competence. This study used multi‐group structural equation modeling (MSEM) to examine how (a) cross‐evaluators’ views on showing respect mediated the relation between multiple measures of social complexity and children's social competence and (b) whether gender moderated the above relations. Two hundred and sixteen participants were chosen from third to sixth graders (111 girls; M_age =10.30). They completed self‐reports of social competence and showing respect, and peer reports of classmates’ showing respect, overt aggression, physical victimization, mutual friends, and social competence. Self‐evaluations of showing respect were negatively related to group‐level social competence. Peer evaluations of showing respect mediated the association between peer relations (specifically, number of mutual friends and overt aggression) and individual‐level and group‐level social competence. Gender moderated three paths in the model, namely links between overt aggression and (a) peer evaluations for showing respect; (b) group‐level social competence; and (c) individual‐level social competence. Negative associations were stronger for girls than for boys. The research findings suggest that gender norms shape the complex relations between children's showing respect and social competence, and an understanding of these relations must take into account differences in evaluations made by children and their peers.     

Dashed Hopes,Dashed Selves? A Sociometer Perspective on Self‐esteem Change Across the Transition to Secondary School

The transition from primary to secondary school challenges children's psychological well‐being. A cross‐transitional longitudinal study (N = 306; mean age = 12.2 years) examined why some children's self‐esteem decreases across the transition whereas other children's self‐esteem does not. Children's expected social acceptance in secondary school was measured before the transition; their actually perceived social acceptance was measured after the transition. Self‐esteem and Big Five personality traits were measured both pre‐ and posttransition. Self‐esteem changed as a function of the discrepancy between children's expected and actually perceived social acceptance. Furthermore, neuroticism magnified self‐esteem decreases when children's ‘hopes were dashed'—when they experienced disappointing levels of social acceptance. These findings provide longitudinal support for sociometer theory across the critical transition to secondary school.     

Teacher–Child Relationship Quality and Children's Peer Victimization and Aggressive Behavior in Late Childhood

This investigation examines the extent to which characteristics of the teacher–child relationship (closeness, dependency, and conflict) are predictive of changes in children's peer victimization and aggressive behavior over the course of a school year. Relational and physical forms of victimization and aggression were studied, and changes in peer acceptance and number of friendships were tested as possible mediators. Longitudinal data from 410 fourth‐ and fifth‐grade students (193 boys; 217 girls) and their teachers (N = 25) were analyzed. Whereas dependency on the teacher predicted heightened victimization from peers, a close relationship with the teacher forecasted less physical aggression toward peers. Moreover, decreases in number of friendships partially mediated the link between dependency on the teacher and heightened relational victimization for boys. These findings have implications for understanding the continuing influence of teacher–child relationships on children's social development in late childhood and for identifying interpersonal risk factors associated with involvement in peer harassment.     

Examining individual‐level academic risk and protective factors for foster youth: School engagement,behaviors, self‐esteem,and social skills

Students' school engagement is widely regarded as critical for positive school adjustment and overall academic success. Foster youth persistently face poorer educational outcomes than peers and demonstrate lower levels of school engagement and higher levels of academically threatening behaviors. The goals of the present study were (a) to explore relationships amongst various child‐level correlates of school engagement and problem behaviors—namely, self‐esteem and social skills—and (b) to respectively investigate the protective potential of self‐esteem and social skills in the association between school engagement and behavior problems that threaten educational trajectories. Results indicate significant associations between school engagement and problem behaviors, as well as between self‐esteem, social skills, and school engagement. Further, self‐esteem mediated the association between school engagement and both youth‐ and foster parent‐reported externalizing behavior, and social skills mediated the association between school engagement and both youth‐ and foster parent‐reported externalizing behavior. Implications for future practice, research, and policy are discussed.     

The Effects of Early Institutionalization and Foster Care Intervention on Children's Social Behaviors at the Age of Eight

The present study compared the social behaviors of eight‐year‐old previously institutionalized Romanian children from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) in two groups: (1) children randomized to foster care homes (FCG), and (2) children randomized to care as usual (remaining in institutions) (CAUG). Children were observed interacting with an age‐ and gender‐matched unfamiliar, non‐institutionalized peer from the community during six interactive tasks, and their behavior was coded for speech reticence, social engagement, task orientation, social withdrawal, and conversational competence. Group comparisons revealed that FCG children were rated as significantly less reticent during a speech task than CAUG children. For CAUG children, longer time spent in institutional care was related to greater speech reticence and lower social engagement. Using an actor–partner interdependence model, CAUG children's behaviors, but not FCG, were found to influence the behavior of unfamiliar peers. These findings are the first to characterize institutionalized children's observed social behaviors toward new peers during middle childhood and highlight the positive effects of foster care intervention in the social domain.     

The importance of peer relatedness at school for affective well‐being in children: Between‐ and within‐person associations

Two intensive longitudinal studies examining the association between children's feeling of relatedness to peers at school and their affective well‐being were performed. In Study 1, 110 third and fourth graders reported on their positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) 4 times daily and on their peer relatedness once a day over 4 weeks. Multilevel analyses revealed that children who reported higher peer relatedness on average also reported higher PA and lower NA (between‐person associations). Moreover, on days when children reported higher peer relatedness than usual, they also reported higher PA, but they did not necessarily report lower NA (within‐person associations). In Study 2, 55 fourth, fifth, and sixth graders indicated their PA, NA, and peer relatedness once a day over 2 weeks. We replicated the findings of Study 1 on both levels. The studies showed that feeling related to peers is associated with high PA at school and at home on a daily basis, illustrating the function of peer relatedness in promoting positive well‐being. The findings further demonstrated the necessity of intensive longitudinal studies focusing on within‐person associations and the importance of measuring both PA and NA in order to capture effects on affective well‐being thoroughly.     

Unsociability in Chinese adolescents: Cross‐informant agreement and relations with social and school adjustment

We examined cross‐informant agreement of unsociability and associations of unsociability with social and school adjustment. Participants were 229 (48% girls; M _age = 14.25, SD = .78 years) seventh‐ and eighth‐graders in Liaoning, China. Unsociability and shyness were assessed with self‐reports and peer nominations. Social and school adjustment data were obtained from multiple sources (self‐, peer‐, teacher‐reports). Peer‐reported unsociability was not significantly correlated with self‐reported unsociability, but was positively correlated with self‐reported shyness. Path models indicated that controlling for shyness and demographic covariates, peer‐, but not self‐reported, unsociability was associated with low peer acceptance, high peer rejection and exclusion, low school liking, and low academic performance and achievement. The findings suggest that unsociable Chinese adolescents may have multifaceted adjustment difficulties with peers and at school, but only when perceived as unsociable by peers. Methodological and theoretical implications of the results and the lack of correspondence between self‐ and peer‐reports were discussed.     

The Social Cognitions of Socially Withdrawn Children

The purpose of this study was to examine the social cognitions of peer‐identified socially withdrawn children. Participants included 457 children from grades four, five and six (54% females, 46% males). Children completed a selection of self‐ and peer‐report measures including: (1) peer‐rated behavioral nominations; (2) hostile intent biases and social responses to ambiguous situations; (3) social goals and self‐efficacy; and (4) a newly developed measure of causal attributions. An extreme groups procedure was used to identify three groups of children: (1) socially withdrawn (n=50); (2) aggressive (n=53); and (3) a comparison group (n=206). As compared with their peers, withdrawn children displayed a pattern of self‐defeating attributions for social situations, reported lower efficacy for assertive goals, and indicated a preference for non‐assertive, withdrawn strategies to deal with hypothetical conflict situations. Findings are discussed with respect to implications for interventions, and directions for further research are presented.     

Peer Nominations of Emotional Expressivity Among Urban Children: Social and Psychological Correlates

The current study examined associations between peer nominations of children's expression of negative emotions and psychological, social, and behavioral correlates in a sample of 523 first graders. Children (85 percent African‐American) completed a peer nomination measure for expressing negative emotions. In addition, three other domains of functioning were assessed using multiple raters: internalizing symptoms (self, parent), externalizing behavior (parent, teacher), and social competence (parent, teacher). Regression analyses indicated that peer nominations of negative emotions predicted higher levels of teacher‐rated externalizing behavior and lower levels of teacher‐rated social competence. Peer nominations of emotions were significantly associated with teacher ratings but unrelated to self‐ and parent‐report measures. Adding to a small but growing literature, our findings underscore the importance of assessing peer perceptions of children's emotional expressivity and their associations to social and psychological functioning in an urban, predominantly African‐American sample.     

Reported Peer Conflicts of Children in the United States and Indonesia

U.S. and Indonesian 9‐ to 11‐year‐old children (N=147) reported on multiple occasions conflicts that they experienced with peers. The precursors of conflict, behavior during conflict episodes, and resolutions were coded. Teacher ratings of aggression and social preference were obtained. The conflicts of children in both countries most often occurred between friends, were short, amicably settled, and solved without aggression. Indonesian children reported disengaging from conflict more often than did U.S. children, whereas U.S. children more frequently reported using negotiation. Reports of aggression during conflict were associated with U.S. and Indonesian children's teacher‐rated aggression, whereas reports of disengagement were associated with Indonesian children's teacher‐rated social preference and aggression.