Louise C. Perry

Cognitive social learning mediators of aggression.

This research explored links between aggression in elementary school children and 2 classes of social cognitions that might influence childrens decisions about whether to behave aggressively. Aggressive and nonaggressive children (mean age 11.3 years) responded to 2 questionnaires. One questionnaire measured childrens perceptions of their abilities to perform aggression and related behaviors (perceptions of self-efficacy), and the other measured childrens beliefs about the reinforcing and punishing consequences of aggression (response-outcome expectancies). Compared to nonaggressive children, aggressive subjects reported that it is easier to perform aggression and more difficult to inhibit aggressive impulses. Aggressive children also were more confident that aggression would produce tangible rewards and would reduce aversive treatment by others. There were negligible sex differences in perceived self-efficacy for aggression but large sex differences in anticipated social and personal consequences for aggression, with girls expecting aggression to cause more suffering in the victim and to be punished more severely by the peer group and by the self. It was concluded that childrens knowledge of their capabilities and childrens knowledge of the consequences of their actions are factors that need to be taken into account by cognitive models of aggression.

Learning of Aggression

Aggression—behavior aimed at harming another person—has environmental and biological determinants. Environmental factors include the degree to which the environment provides aggressive models, reinforces aggression, and frustrates and victimizes the child. Biological factors include the child’s temperament, hormones, and physique. Interplays between heredity and environment are also influential. For example, children born with irritating, hard-to-handle temperaments are especially at risk for eliciting the rejecting, punitive parental reactions that are conducive to aggressive development. This chapter focuses on environmental bases of aggression. Special attention is paid to how environmental factors interact with the child’s cognitions and behaviors to influence the development of aggression.

Social Learning, Causal Attribution, and Moral Internalization

For the past two decades much of the research concerned with the effects of socialization practices on the child’s personality and social development has been inspired by learning theory. It is thus not surprising that learning-theory explanations figure prominently in contemporary accounts of the effectiveness of such practices as punishment, social reinforcement, and modeling (e.g., Parke, 1970, 1974; Walters & Grusec, 1977). Over the last several years, however, psychologists working within the framework of attribution theory have presented an alternative conceptualization of the effects of socialization practices on the child’s development and have begun to muster substantive support for their position.

Processes of Attribution and Children's Self-Punishment following Misbehavior.

PERRY, DAVDm G.; PERRY, LOUISE C.; BUSSEY, KAY; ENGLISH, DAVD; and ARNOLD, GAIL. Processes of Attribution and Childrens Self-Punishment Following Misbehavior. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1980, 51, 545-551. To explore some attributional determinants of childrens self-punishment following transgression in a moral situation, third and fourth graders initially either did or did not hear an adult directly attribute prosocial attributes to them. Subsequently, the children were induced to break a prohibition. Following their deviation, children were told that other children deviated too (high consensus), that other children had not deviated (low consensus), or received no consensus information. They then were asked to punish themselves for deviating by relinquishing valuable tokens. Children who had received verbal attributions of goodness and received low-consensus information about their deviation punished themselves substantially more than children in any other condition. Results were interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that children who are told by adults that they possess desirable moral characteristics experience particularly strong remorse when they fail to exercise self-control in temptation situations, so long as they cannot attribute their deviation to something in the environment and thereby abdicate responsibility for their lack of moral conduct. The relevance of attribution theory to understanding the development of childrens self-reactions was stressed.

Gender and reward distributions: A test of two hypotheses

This study was designed as a test of two competing explanations of gender differences in distributive justice: (a) the equity-equality hypothesis, which states that males endorse equitable distributions more than females and females endorse equal distributions more than males; and (b) the exploitation-accommodation hypothesis, which states that the sexes vary their norm endorsement according to self-favoring (males) or other-favoring (females) distribution outcomes. Preadolescent and college-aged subjects rated the fairness of reward distributions of vignette characters who had contributed either more or less than a co-worker in a task, and had subsequently divided the rewards either equitably or equally. The data provided no support for the equity-equality hypothesis, but did support the exploitation-accommodation hypothesis. Specifically, females rated equitable distributions of inferior workers as more fair than males did. Thus, the popular conclusion that males have a stronger commitment to equity than females must be rejected.

Happiness: when does it lead to self-indulgence and when does it lead to self-denial?

Previous research on self-gratification in children has found that happiness, compared to a neutral affective state, sometimes causes self-indulgence and sometimes causes self-denial. Review of this research led to the hypothesis that happiness leads to self-indulgence when children have no reason to believe that excessive self-gratification is morally wrong but that happiness promotes selfdenial when children fear that excessive self-gratification would violate a moral rule. In the present study, children were first placed in either a happy or neutral mood. They were then given an opportunity to help themselves freely to a reward supply, but half the children in each affect condition were warned that excessive self-gratification would violate a moral rule whereas the other half were not. In the absence of information that excessive self-gratification would violate a moral standard, happiness produced self-indulgence, but when children were told that excessive self-gratification would be wrong, happy children denied themselves significantly more than neutral-mood children. It was suggested that happiness motivates children to try to sustain their elevated mood; the behavioral route to maintaining positive mood, however, depends on how children perceive the moral implications of their actions.