Social Cognition and Negative Reactions to Children: A Comparison of Mothers of Aggressive and Nonaggressive Boys

Using a three-step cognitive model of parents' reactions to children's negative behavior, the present study examined the social cognition of mothers of aggressive and nonaggressive boys. The model proposes, first, that parents use information from immediate interaction to assess whether children freely chose and controlled their negative behavior. On the basis of this assessment parents, second, make attributions about children's intentions, dispositions, and responsibility for negative behavior. Third, these attributions then mediate parents' affective and behavioral reactions. Fifteen mothers of aggressive boys and 32 mothers of nonaggressive boys watched videotapes of children misbehaving and made judgments that reflected the model's three steps. Results showed attributional biases in mothers of aggressive boys that are comparable to those others (Dodge, 1980) have observed in aggressive boys themselves: Mothers of aggressive boys made more negative attributions and reported stronger negative affect than did mothers of nonaggressive boys. Negative biases occurred even though use of contextual information to make attributions and use of attributions to mediate reactions appeared comparable in the two groups. The findings, furthermore, were consistent with the hypothesis that attributions mediate mothers' reactions through their effects on emotion.