The development and maintenance of children's reputation among peers: An analogue study.
Creators: name: Gentile, Carole.
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 1994
Subjects: subject: Psychology, Social.

description: Children who are disliked by their peers often behave in manifestly aversive ways that elicit rejection. Literature reviews have concluded that social skills training has frequently succeeded in improving rejected children's behaviour, although these improvements have not invariably led to improvements in children's peer reputation. The present study addressed this issue in a short-term prospective design in which vignettes of a hypothetical child were presented to 211 fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade children on three separate occasions (i.e., Times 1, 2, and 3). At Time 1, the hypothetical child was described as either prosocial, subtly aversive, or manifestly aversive, thus, establishing his reputation as popular, mildly rejected, or strongly rejected, respectively. At Times 2 and 3, the hypothetical child's behaviour was described either remaining stable or changing progressively. For the hypothetical child who changed progressively, his subsequent behaviour was either prosocial, subtly aversive, or manifestly aversive. All possible combinations of initial and subsequent behaviour involving prosocial, subtly aversive, and manifestly aversive behaviour were, therefore, represented in the study. Children's liking of the hypothetical child as well as their recall of the hypothetical child's behaviour and their attributions for his behaviour were assessed. Children liked the prosocial child most, followed by the subtly aversive child, and finally, by the manifestly aversive child. Once the hypothetical child's reputation had been established, marked improvements or decrements in his behaviour led to incremental changes in children's liking of him. When the hypothetical child's subsequent behaviour departed only mildly from his reputation, children did not immediately change their liking of the character. These reputational effects did not, however, have an enduring impact on children's liking of the hypothetical child once his behaviour had clearly improved or deteriorated at Time 3. Instead, at Time 3 children based their liking of the hypothetical child on his current behaviour. Children recalled manifestly aversive behaviour better than they did subtly aversive behaviour at both Times 1 and 3. At Times 1 and 3, children also ascribed schema-consistent behaviours to the hypothetical child that were not included in the vignettes, and distorted the information presented to them to make it more compatible with the hypothetical child's behaviour. At Time 3, these errors of commission were based on the hypothetical child's current behaviour rather than his previous reputation. This again suggests that there were no enduring reputational effects at Time 3 once the hypothetical child's behaviour had changed. Children's attributions for the prosocial and the subtly aversive hypothetical children's behaviour at Time 1 suggested a positive bias towards these characters. Children's attributions for the manifestly aversive hypothetical child at Time 1 did not show a clear bias of any kind. At Time 3, children gave the hypothetical child whose subsequent behaviour was prosocial credit for his good behaviour, although the pattern of attributions was not as clear as at Time 1. No other significant reputational effects were found at Time 3 suggesting that children thought of the hypothetical child in terms of his present behaviour rather than his reputation. The importance of considering behavioural and reputational factors in the understanding of the development and maintenance of children's reputation among peers is discussed in reference to these findings. Conceptual and methodological refinements for future research are presented. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)