Hostile attribution biases suggest that another childs actions are accidental

Two experiments tested an intervention approach to reduce young children’s hostile attribution bias and aggression: self-persuasion. Children with high levels of hostile attribution bias recorded a video-message advocating to peers why story characters who caused a negative outcome may have had nonhostile intentions [self-persuasion condition], or they simply described the stories [control condition]. Before and after the manipulation, hostile attribution bias was assessed using vignettes of ambiguous provocations. Study 1 [n = 83, age 4–8] showed that self-persuasion reduced children’s hostile attribution bias. Study 2 [n = 121, age 6–9] replicated this finding, and further showed that self-persuasion was equally effective at reducing hostile attribution bias as was persuasion by others [i.e., listening to an experimenter advocating for nonhostile intentions]. Effects on aggressive behavior, however, were small and only significant for one out of four effects tested. This research provides the first evidence that self-persuasion may be an effective approach to reduce hostile attribution bias in young children.

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Children’s daily social interactions abound with provocations by peers, such as when they are physically hurt, laughed at, or excluded from play. The exact reasons behind these provocations, and especially the issue of whether hostile intent was involved, are often unclear. Responding adequately to such ambiguous provocations is central to children’s social adjustment [Dodge et al. ]. Children who tend to perceive ambiguous provocations in a hostile way [e.g., “she tripped me on purpose”] may often respond aggressively, which puts them at risk for psychological maladjustment [Weiss et al. ]. Indeed, numerous studies have shown that hostile attribution biases are linked to aggressive behavior [for reviews, see: Dodge ; De Castro et al. ], as early as the preschool years [Runions and Keating ; Weiss et al. ]. Accordingly, many intervention programs aiming to prevent aggressive behavior problems include techniques to reduce children’s hostile attribution bias [for a review, see Wilson and Lipsey ]. Such intervention efforts may best commence in early childhood, when children’s hostile attribution bias are still relatively sensitive to change [Crick and Dodge ]. The present research tests an intervention approach to reduce hostile attribution bias in young children.

Most interventions that effectively reduce children’s hostile attribution bias rely on attribution retraining techniques [e.g., Coping Power, Lochman and Wells ; BrainPower, Hudley and Graham ; Anger Control Training, Sukhodolsky et al. ]. Children taking part in these interventions typically are assembled in small groups to discuss ambiguous peer provocations. During these discussions, therapists encourage children to question their hostile attributions and teach them to detect cues signaling that someone acted with benign intent [Hilt ]. Meta-analytical work has shown that such interventions tend to effectively reduce children’s aggressive behavior [i.e., weighed mean difference effect size = 0.26; Wilson and Lipsey ]. However, it is unknown to what extent the attribution retraining component contributes to these effects [rather than other intervention components such as anger management or social problem solving].

Moreover, little is known of how attribution retraining is best delivered. The goal of attribution retraining is to reduce children’s hostile attribution bias by persuading them that peer provocations do not necessarily stem from hostile intentions [e.g., “I don’t think she hurt you on purpose. See? She looks sad.”]. Such persuasion is not straightforward. Research in adults suggests that direct attempts at persuasion occasionally backfire: People may reject [rather than accept] such persuasion when their own beliefs [1] are highly discrepant from the persuasive message [i.e., when the message falls outside their “latitude of acceptance;” Atkins et al. ], and [2] are strongly held [Eagly and Telaak ; Schlenker and Trudeau ].

Both these conditions may apply to children with hostile attribution biases. First, the notion that “peers may have benign intentions” will often be discrepant from these children’s typical attribution of provocations as stemming from hostile intentions. Second, hostile attribution biases often are strongly held. Children may have initially acquired a hostile attribution bias because others actually had hostile intentions and did harm them [Dodge ; Frankenhuis and De Weerth ]. Indeed, children holding a hostile attribution bias have often experienced social adversity in the past, such as harsh parenting or peer rejection [Dodge et al. ; Perren et al. ; Weiss et al. ]. Ingrained hostile attribution biases are less susceptible to persuasion by others, and thus limit the potential effectiveness of attribution retraining techniques.

Instead of trying to persuade children, therapists may also adopt a more indirect approach to reduce children’s hostile attribution bias: self-persuasion [Aronson ]. Self-persuasion entails asking people to publicly advocate against their own beliefs. The resulting change in beliefs can be explained by cognitive dissonance processes [Festinger ]: If people publicly espouse viewpoints that are discrepant from their privately held beliefs, they tend to later realign their beliefs with these viewpoints. In adults, self-persuasion has been shown to effectively lead individuals to accept and internalize belief-discrepant messages [Fazio et al. ]. For instance, one study showed that individuals who strongly opposed the use of marijuana later changed their beliefs if they had recorded a video message advocating the legalization of marijuana [Nel et al. ]. Similarly, an effective attribution retraining approach may be to ask children themselves to advocate that peer provocateurs may have had nonhostile intentions.

To investigate the potential effectiveness of self-persuasion as an attribution retraining approach, we conducted two between-subjects experiments involving 4–9-year-old children with high levels of hostile attribution bias. In Study 1 [n = 83], children recorded a video message [allegedly to be shown to pupils from other schools] advocating why peer provocateurs in a series of ambiguous provocation scenarios may have had nonhostile intentions [self-persuasion condition], or they merely described the scenarios [control condition]. Study 2 [n = 121] replicated Study 1, and also included a third condition to investigate whether self-persuasion is more effective than persuasion by others [i.e., children listened to an experimenter advocating why the provocateurs may have had nonhostile intentions]. In both studies, we used vignettes to assess children’s hostile attribution bias before and after the manipulation. Moreover, to investigate to what extent the predicted effect on hostile attribution would generalize to aggressive behavior, we included an in vivo provocation scenario to measure children’s aggression in an emotionally involving situation. We also explored moderation by gender. Boys engage in more direct aggression than girls [Card et al. ] and may thus benefit more from the self-persuasion assignment than do girls.

The study procedures were approved by the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences of Utrecht University. All materials, raw data and syntax can be found online [Van Dijk et al. ].