"That's not what friends do!": Elementary school children's reactions to interpersonal violations.

Little is known about how children respond to interpersonal violations by best friends; therefore the goal of the present study was to examine children's reactions to violations in detail. When confronted with problematic interactions, children must immediately assess the situation and determine the short-term impact, as well as the long-term impact on the relationship. Specifically, children must justify their friends' actions, determine their willingness to overcome, and assess the long-term negative impact on the friendship. Elementary school children (N=105) responded to six hypothetical vignettes depicting interpersonal violations (e.g., lie, blame, and secret) and completed measures of social cognitive skills. Results indicate that children's short-term assessment (occurrence of forgiveness, occurrence of revenge, and reasonings about overcoming) does impact their expectations of long-term negative impact. In addition, friendship understanding and emotional display rules were significantly related to several aspects of children's reactions. Overall, children select behaviors and reason to reduce the negative aspects following interpersonal violations. Moreover, children view the use of forgiveness as positive and the use of revenge as negative. Findings indicate that children's reactions to interpersonal violations is a worthy and vital area of research that needs more examination

The effects of conflict role and intensity on preschoolers’ expectations about peer conflict

Using a puppet procedure depicting hypothetical conflict involving the participant and a peer, 96 preschoolers’ (48 boys and 48 girls; M 1/4 5.14 years, SD 1/4 0.78 years) expectations about peer conflict were assessed as a function of their role in the conflict (i.e., initiator of or responder to initial provocation) and the intensity level of the conflict. Initiators of conflict expected less conflict escalation and subsequent problems with the same peer from the conflict than did responders, particularly following low-intensity conflict. Findings also indicated that, for low-intensity but not high-intensity conflict, girls expected the same peer to provoke them during a subsequent interaction more often than did boys. Results provide further support for assessing preschoolers’ understanding of conflict and are consistent with previous work demonstrating a self-serving bias in young children’s perceptions and reports of their conflicts with other children. Moreover, findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the development of peer relations.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

An Empirical Analysis of the Relation Between Moral Development and Religious Orientation

The relation between moral development and religious orientation was examined. The three levels of Kohlberg\u27s theory of moral development (Preconventional, Conventional, and Post-conventional) were examined in relation to the three dimensions of religious orientation (Extrinsic, Intrinsic, and Quest) proposed by Balson, Schoenrade, and Ventis (1993). It was first hypothesized that the Extrinsic Orientation would be correlated negatively with both the Quest and Intrinsic orientations to support the theoretical assumptions made by Batson, Schoenrade, and Ventis (1993). The other hypotheses examined specific relationships between moral development, as measured by the Defining Issues Test and religious orientation, as measured by the Religious Life Inventory. Results only partially supported the hypotheses because an unexpected positive relation between the Extrinsic and Quest orientations was found. The three religious dimensions were not found to correlate according to theory. Results suggested much overlap in both definition and measurement of the three orientations indicating that the three dimensions were not separate constructs. Theoretical implications showed that the definitions of the Extrinsic, Intrinsic, and Quest orientations were not accurate for this specific sample. Suggestions for future research included reexamining the definitions of Intrinsic, Extrinsic, and Quest orientations as well as restructuring of the measurement of religious orientation