Janet Strayer

An Ethological Analysis of Social Agonism and Dominance Relations among Preschool Children.

STRAYER, F. F., and STRAYER, JANET. An Ethological Analysis of Social Agonism and Dominance Relations among Preschool Children. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1976, 47, 980-989. Agonism and dyadic dominance are basic concepts in the ethological analysis of social conflict and group power relations. The present research extends the application of these concepts to the analysis of childrens social behavior. A social agonism inventory, including specific initiation and response patterns, was developed from videotaped records of free play among 17 preschool children. Systematic comparison of dyadic agonistic interactions revealed relatively rigid and stable dominance relations. These relations conformed to a linear model of social dominance. Although there were sex differences in the frequency of initiated conflict, position in the dominance hierarchy was not directly related to gender. Possible developmental changes in both agonism and dominance were discussed. In addition, findings were related to comparative research .on social ecology of nonhuman primates.

Facial and verbal measures of children's emotions and empathy

The relation between children’s emotional expressions and their reported experience of emotions is relevant to multicomponent models of both emotion and empathy development. Children (N 73) in three age groups (5-, 9-, and 13-year-olds) participated in a study of their facial and verbal responses to emotionally evocative videotapes. Children were unobtrusively videotaped while they watched these stimuli, and their facial expressions were coded. Children were also interviewed to determine the emotions they attributed to stimulus persons and to themselves. There was significant but modest convergence between facial and verbal measures of emotion, an important finding given the paucity of independent research in this area. In addition, two nonconvergent indices of empathy derived from facial and verbal measures showed some functional similarities in their relations with other variables. On the basis of similar results from other laboratories, we argue that efforts to find converging measures of emotion and empathy should be redirected to study the semi-independent development of facial and verbal emotional responses to the same events.

Children's Personal Distance and Their Empathy: Indices of Interpersonal Closeness

We examined relations between children’s preferred physical closeness with other persons and both their specific responsive empathy with these persons and their more general dispositional or trait empathy. Children (N 73) in three age groups (5-, 9-, and 13-year-olds) viewed persons in videotaped vignettes, were interviewed for responsive empathy with these persons, and then placed photos of them on a grid at individually preferred distances relative to themselves. Dispositional empathy was assessed by questionnaire in a separate session. Older children placed vignette characters closer to themselves when they reported greater responsive empathy with them. There were substantial differences in responsive empathy across characters and situations, as would be expected: Adults who punished rarely elicited empathy, nor did a child who lied about another child. Consistent with the within-subjects analysis, vignette characters who elicited greater empathy also elicited closer personal distances. In both analyses (within-subjects and across vignette characters), strength of relation increased with age and was stronger for girls than boys. In contrast to responsive empathy, dispositional empathy was not significantly associated with closer personal distance, despite the significant correlation of the two empathy measures. Thus, it seems important to distinguish empathy that is responsive to particular persons and contexts from more general attitudes that may or may not generalise to specific contexts.

Social aggression and power relations among preschool children

Social agonism and dominance relations were assessed in two preschool groups. An average of 30 hours of observational data was obtained for each group during free-play over a six-week period. A Social Agonism Inventory describing specific initiation and response behaviors during episodes of social conflict was used to code agonistic activity. Dyadic interactions were examined to determine whether the resolution of agonistic interactions conformed to a linear model of social dominance. Although there were group differences in the relative frequency of different forms of conflict, systematic comparison of agonistic wins and losses re vealed similarly rigid and linear dominance structures at both preschools. The relation of aggression and dominance was empirically examined by comparing the initiation and receipt of agonism by high vs low dominance status children. Higher dominance status children engaged in more agonistic interactions, but a majority of these interactions were directed toward other high-ranking group members.

Trapped in the Mirror: Psychosocial Reflections on Mid-Life and the Queen in Snow White

Psychological interest in folktales stems in part from their dual roles as expressers of psychological themes and as traditional vehicles for intergenerational socialization. The tale of Snow

Social behaviors, social‐cognitive skills, and clinicians’ judgments of children referred for aggression

Aggressive, affiliative, and play interactions for a group of clinic‐referred aggressive 6‐year‐olds (n = 11) were observed over a six week social‐cognitive training program. Freeplay data showed significant decreases in aggression and significant increases in affiliation and associative play. Aggressive behaviors were structured into a dominance hierarchy before affiliative relations were established; however, the hierarchys function in regulating aggression contrasted with reports of non‐clinic samples. Behavioral data, clinical judgments, and childrens performance on social‐cognitive tasks provided concurrent social skill validity assessments. Clinicians’ assessments of childrens social competence were significantly associated with changes in social play behaviors. Whereas children improved significantly on a number of social cognitive tasks, only their self‐concept scores correlated significantly with pro‐social behavior changes. Results demonstrate a useful within‐group method for monitoring socia...

Children's and Adults' Responses to Fairy Tales.

Despite reports that fairy tales reflect social attitudes and play a role in childrens socialization, little evidence has been gathered directly from children. The present study investigates a sample of North American childrens (n = 40) and adults’ (n = 30) familiarity with, and liking for, fairy tales. Present data support the hypothesis that liking for this genre is related to childhood exposure to it and to childrens involvement in imaginal activities. In addition, factors expected to influence liking for a given tale (i.e. emotion attribution; consistency of listeners and protagonists gender; conformity of protagonists gender to gender stereotype) were examined in response to a traditional narrative presented in either a female‐ or male‐protagonist version. Present findings indicate that the emotions attributed to the story were similar across child and adult respondents, and similarly affected ones liking for the tale. It was found that females liked the tale more than did males across both pr...