Dissertations and Theses @ UNI
Availability
Open Access Thesis
Keywords
Aggressiveness in children; Academic theses;
Abstract
The purpose of the study was to examine high aggressive and low aggressive children's perceptions of their peers' intentions in ambiguous and aggressive situations. Teacher ratings of aggression were assessed for 25 first grade children. Measures were taken to evaluate children's judgments about aggressors' intentions in ambiguous and aggressive acts. In the first part of the assessment, children were read three stories about an ambiguously aggressive situation, asked whether or not it was okay for the provoker to perform the action, and asked why they believed the provoker carried out the aggressive act. In the second part, children were read the same three stories including three possible intentions (hostile, personal-instrumental, or social-instrumental) for each story and asked to rate how bad these actions were on a scale of 1 to 4, from 1 "very bad," to 4 "not bad at all." It was hypothesized that aggressive children would identify more hostile intentions for the ambiguous actions than less aggressive children and that boys would identify more hostile intentions than girls. Also, it was hypothesized that aggressive children would judge hostile intentions with less severity than less aggressive children in aggressive situations. Finally, it was hypothesized that children would view hostile intentions of aggression as more wrong than personal-instrumental and prosocial intentions, and that they would judge personal-instrumental intentions as more wrong than prosocial intentions. Contrary to the predictions, there were no significant differences between high aggressive and low aggressive children's attributions of intentions in the ambiguous stories. Nor were there significant gender differences in these attributions of intent. Furthermore, the results revealed that there were no differences concerning how high and low aggressive children perceived hostile, personal, and prosocial intentions of aggression. One hypothesis of this study was supported. All children viewed hostile intentions as more "bad" than personal intentions and personal intentions as more "bad" than prosocial intentions. This suggests that children find prosocial aggression more acceptable than personal and personal aggression more acceptable than hostile. This study furthers our understanding of first grade children's perceptions of aggression and helps identify what intentions children attribute to aggressive behaviors. It extends previous research on children's perceived intentions of ambiguous and aggressive situations, perceived intentions of specifically hostile, personal-instrumental, and prosocial intentions of aggression, and children's moral evaluations of intentions, justifications, and punishments. With this information appropriate interventions can be developed.
Year of Submission
2004
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Department of Psychology
First Advisor
Carolyn Hildebrandt
Second Advisor
Helen Harton
Third Advisor
Joshua Susskind
Date Original
2004
Object Description
1 PDF file (88 leaves)
Copyright
©2004 Tara Jo Fish
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Finch, Tara Jo, "Children’s Perceptions of Peers’ Intentions in Ambiguous and Aggressive Situations" (2004). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 2632.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/2632
Comments
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