Marie S. Tisak

Children's Conceptions of Parental Authority.

TISAK, MARIE S. Childrens Conceptions of Parental Authority. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1986, 57, 166-176. Childrens conceptions of parental authority were examined. 120 children (ages 6, 8, and 10 years) were administered an interview to assess the boundaries of parental authority. Subjects were asked to make evaluations about events pertaining to the restraint of behavior and events pertaining to the enforcement or maintenance of parental rule systems. Social events that differ in content (stealing, family chores, and friendship choice) were used to examine whether there is heterogeneity in childrens evaluations of the dimensions of authority. The results show that children draw boundaries to parental authority and that childrens notions of authority are heterogeneous with respect to the content of the social event.

Permanency and ephemerality of psychological measures with application to organizational commitment.

The constancy or change of an attribute is important to most substantive areas of psychology. During the past decade, 2 independent methodological schools have developed statistical models for the depiction of longitudinal research. One, which might be called the European school, has created latent state-trait models. Alternatively, the American school has formulated models that go by the rubric of latent curve analysis or latent growth models. In this article, the authors integrate both approaches into a detailed unified latent curve and latent state-trait model (LC-LSTM) that includes the significant features from both schools. From the LC-LSTM framework, the permanency and ephemerality of psychological measures are discussed and the concepts of stability and reliability are reformulated. In addition, a comprehensive illustration on organization commitment is presented.

Preschoolers' Normative and Prescriptive Judgments about Relational and Overt Aggression

The present study examines preschoolers judgments about responses to hypothetical aggressive provocation. Ninety-nine preschool children were read two stories, one depicting an overt provocation and the other depicting a relational provocation. Following each story, children were interviewed to assess their normative (what a peer would do) and prescriptive (what a peer should do) judgments about the victims behavior. Additionally, perceptions about the relative degree of badness of different types of aggressive responses (physical, verbal, and relational) to the provocation were assessed. The results showed several significant effects with respect to aggression type, age, participant gender, and story-character gender. For example, in both of the provocation situations, participants reported that overtly aggressive responses (physical and verbal) would happen more often than they should happen. Moreover, in both the provocation situations, participants felt that relationally aggressive responses were more acceptable than verbally or physically aggressive responses. Additionally, female participants rated the relationally aggressive response as more wrong than did the male participants, but only in the relational provocation situation. The present results have important implications for the classroom setting. For example, teachers may address the subject of relationally harmful acts with their preschool-aged students.

Aggression and conventional rule violation among adolescents: Social‐reasoning predictors of social behavior

The god of the current study was to determine whether aggressive and conventional rule-violating behaviors could be predicted by social-cognitive beliefs and values regarding aggression and conventional rule violations. The extent to which adolescents (N = 398; grades 9 through 12) engaged in both aggressive behavior and conventional school rule violations was assessed using self-ratings and peer nominations. Results indicated that aggressive and conventional rule-violating behaviors were predicted by (1) beliefs about the legitimacy of aggressive and convention-violating behavior; (2) values placed on the expected outcomes of these acts, such as negative self-evaluations, peer disapproval, and tangible rewards; and (3) beliefs about the effects of these acts on others. Furthermore, the results indicated that aggressive and conventional transgressions were predicted better by beliefs and values within the same social-cognitive domain than across domains. In contrast to females, male students committed more aggressive acts and conventional rule violations and reported beliefs and values that were more supportive of aggressive behavior and conventional rule-violating behavior. However, gender differences in beliefs and values were greater for aggressive acts than for conventional acts. The results support the need to distinguish between behavioral domains when attempting to predict social behavior.

Longitudinal Models of Reliability and Validity: A Latent Curve Approach

The concepts of reliability and validity and their associated coefficients typically have been restricted to a single measurement occasion. This paper describes dynamic generalizations of reliability and validity that will incorporate longitudinal or developmental models, using latent curve analysis. Initially a latent curve model is formulated to depict change. This longitudinal model is then incorporated into the classical definitions of reli ability and validity. This approach permits the separa tion of constancy or change from the indexes of reli ability and validity. Statistical estimation and hypoth esis testing be achieved using standard structural equations modeling computer programs. These longitu dinal models of reliability and validity are demon strated on sociological psychological data. Index terms: concurrent validity, dynamic models, dynamic true score, latent curve analysis, latent trajectory, predictive validity, reliability, validity.

Is prosocial behaviour a good thing? Developmental changes in children's evaluations of helping, sharing, cooperating, and comforting

This study investigated the development of prosocial thinking in children. The participants were 83 children (7–12 years of age) who responded to questions concerning helping, sharing, cooperating, and comforting. Specifically, for each of the prosocial behaviours studied, participants were asked: (1) whether they would respond in a prosocial manner (Expected Behaviour); (2) whether they thought it would be alright if they did not respond in a prosocial manner (Obligation); (3) whether they would feel good about themselves for not responding prosocially (Selfevaluation); (4) whether it would bother them if others thought they were mean for not responding prosocially (Peer Evaluation). The results revealed age and prosocial behavioural differences as well as an interaction between age and prosocial behaviour type (e.g. curvilinear relationships are reported).

Societal rule evaluations: Adolescent offenders' reasoning about moral, conventional, and personal rules

This study investigated adolescent offenders (81 felons and 83 misdemeanants) evaluations of three types of societal rules (moral, conventional, and personal) on dimensions pertaining to importance, sanctions, authority, and individual choice. In addition, participants selected the acts which should be under personal jurisdiction. Participants provided reasons (i.e., justifications) to support their evaluations. The judgment evidence suggests that the moral rules were considered the most important, the transgressions the most wrong, the violators the most deserving of punishment, and the acts the least acceptable when permitted by an authority. With regard to these same dimensions, conventional rules and violations were ranked second; whereas, the personal rules were ranked third. Offender status differences were obtained for importance ratings and for deservedness of punishment. Justifications for moral events reflected reasoning from both the moral (e.g., others welfare) and conventional (e.g., social order) domains. Reasoning about conventions involved both conventional and personal concerns; whereas, justifications about personal issues focused on individual prerogatives. The implications of these data are discussed..

Children's reasoning about responses to peer aggression: Victim's and witness's expected and prescribed behaviors

This research examined childrens reasoning about expected (i.e., what a peer would do) and prescribed (i.e., what a peer should do) responses to unprovoked, intentional aggressive actions in two contexts: as a victim of such a transgression and as a witness to the incident, Physical harm and property damage items were used in a structured interview format, There were 90 subjects drawn from three elementary school grades (2nd, 4th, and 6th), Children differentiated between the expected and prescribed responses of peers and significant developmental differences in childrens evaluations were found, Although the majority of the subjects in all grades denounced retaliation on the basis of concerns about others welfare, older children stated that peers were likely to retaliate against the perpetrator nonetheless, Across different contexts, older childrens responses appeared to reveal a greater independence from authority in negotiating peer interactions, In evaluating the witnesss responses to aggressive acts, younger childrens expected and prescribed responses were less disparate than that of the older children, The utility of including different vantage points of the child in examining childrens social reasoning about aggression and the application of the present findings to social information-processing models are discussed..

The contribution of moral disengagement in mediating individual tendencies toward aggression and violence

This study examines the role of moral disengagement in fostering engagement in aggression and violence through adolescence to young adulthood in accordance with a design in which the study of individual differences and of their relations is instrumental to address underlying intraindividual structures and process conducive to detrimental conduct. Participants were 345 young adults (52% females) who were followed across 4 time periods (T1 M age = 17 years to T4 M age = 25 years). The longitudinal relations among irritability, hostile rumination, and moral disengagement attest to a conceptual model in which moral disengagement is crucial in giving access to action to aggressive tendencies. Findings suggest that irritability and hostile rumination contributed to the development of each other reciprocally and significantly across time. While hostile rumination and moral disengagement significantly mediated the relation between irritability and violence, moral disengagement significantly mediated the relation between hostile rumination and violence.

Early Adolescents’ Conceptions of Parental and Friend Authority Over Relational Aggression

The purpose of the present research is to compare early adolescents’ beliefs about parental and friend jurisdiction over relational aggression to their beliefs about parental and friend jurisdiction over physical aggression and personal behaviors. One hundred three adolescents (Xı age = 12 years, 11 months; SD = 12.46 months) are individually interviewed and asked to evaluate the acceptability of parents and friends negating their physically aggressive behaviors (e.g., hitting), relationally aggressive behaviors (e.g., gossiping), and personally aggressive behaviors (e.g., changing hairstyles). They are also asked to justify their responses. Results highlight the complexity in adolescents’ thinking about these issues. For example, adolescents believe that parental jurisdiction is more acceptable over physical aggression as compared to relational aggression. However, adolescents do not make this distinction with regard to friend jurisdiction. When justifying their responses for relational aggression, adolescents cite social conventions, personal choice, and relationship maintenance reasons.