Two studies examined middle school students' achievement values by using peer nomination procedures. Nominations of peers whom participants admired, respected, and wanted to be like were summed to create a values index. Respondents also nominated peers who fit 6 behavioral descriptions including effort versus disengagement and being socially responsible versus deviant. Study 1 participants were African American and Study 2 participants were ethnically diverse. Both studies yielded systematic findings. Girls valued high-achieving female classmates, whereas ethnic minority boys least valued high-achieving male students. White boys, similar to girls, valued high-achieving, same ethnicity classmates. Respondents associated academic disengagement and social deviance with being male, a low achiever, and an ethnic minority. The usefulness of peer nomination procedures as a methodology for studying values and implications for understanding the plight of ethnic minority male adolescents are discussed.Writing in 1967 about the achievement gap between Black and White students, Irwin Katz was among the first psychologists to call attention to the study of motivation as a promising direction for research on the causes of low achievement among ethnic minority youth (Katz, 1967). Thirty years later, Katz's admonitions still ring true. African American children continue to experience chronic school failure in disproportionately high numbers, and efforts to understand the root causes of this vexing problem have increasingly turned to motivational explanations. For example, it has been argued that a history of school failure has led many Black children to have low expectations for future success, to perceive themselves as relatively incompetent, and to attribute poor performance to either low ability or other factors not within their control. Although low expectations, perceived incompetence, and attributions to uncontrollability are often precursors to failure (e.g., Weiner, 1985), the relations between these maladaptive self-beliefs and school achievement among African American youth are far from certain (see review in Graham, 1994).A different kind of motivational explanation for Black underachievement that may hold more promise focuses on achievement values. Unlike achievement-related cognitions, which largely center on beliefs about ability ("Can I do
The editors of this special issue reflect on the current status and future directions of research on race, ethnicity, and culture in child development. Research in the special issue disentangles race, ethnicity, culture, and immigrant status, and identifies mediators of sociocultural variables on developmental outcomes. The special issue includes important research on normal development in context for ethnic and racial minority children, addresses racial and ethnic identity development, and considers intergroup processes. The methodological innovations as well as challenges of current research are highlighted. It is recommended that future research adhere to principles of cultural validity described in the text.
Attribution theorists propose that negative actions of others perceived as intended elicit anger, and anger then functions as a motivator of hostile behavior. We examined the understanding of these attribution-affect-action linkages among young ethnic minority adolescents. Forty-four Latino and African-American middle-school children labeled as aggressive and a matched group of nonaggressives read causally ambiguous scenarios describing negative outcomes initiated by a hypothetical peer. They then made judgments about the peer's intentions, their own feelings of anger, and the likelihood that they would behave aggressively toward that peer. Concerning the relations between these variables, the data supported a mediational model of emotion as postulated by attribution theory. The implications of these findings for attributional change were discussed. This article was written while Sandra Graham was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California, with support from the Spencer Foundation and the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for Minorities. We thank Ms. Willis Charles and the students of Washington Middle School for their patience and cooperation. Appreciation also is extended to Kaori Karasawa for her help with data analysis and to Bernard Weiner for his comments on an earlier version of this article.
An attributional intervention was designed to reduce aggressive males' tendency to attribute hostile intentions to peers following ambiguously caused peer provocations. African-American elementary school boys (N = 101), aggressive and nonaggressive, were randomly assigned to the attributional intervention, an attention training program, or a no-treatment control group. Data were collected on subjects' attributions about hypothetical and laboratory simulations of peer provocation, disciplinary referrals to the school office, and teacher ratings of aggressive behavior. Aggressive subjects in the attributional intervention were less likely to presume hostile intent by peers in hypothetical and laboratory simulations of ambiguous provocation. They were also less likely to endorse hostile retaliation on judgment measures and to engage in verbally hostile behaviors in the laboratory task. Further, intervention subjects were rated as less aggressive by their teachers following the treatment. Both the benefits of attributional change and its limitations in the African-American population are discussed.
An attributional intervention was designed to reduce aggressive males' tendency to attribute hostile intentions to peers following ambiguously caused peer provocations. African-American elementary school boys (N = 101), aggressive and nonaggressive, were randomly assigned to the attributional intervention, an attention training program, or a no-treatment control group. Data were collected on subjects' attributions about hypothetical and laboratory simulations of peer provocation, disciplinary referrals to the school office, and teacher ratings of aggressive behavior. Aggressive subjects in the attributional intervention were less likely to presume hostile intent by peers in hypothetical and laboratory simulations of ambiguous provocation. They were also less likely to endorse hostile retaliation on judgment measures and to engage in verbally hostile behaviors in the laboratory task. Further, intervention subjects were rated as less aggressive by their teachers following the treatment. Both the benefits of attributional change and its limitations in the African-American population are discussed.
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