Can Self-Persuasion Reduce Hostile Attribution Bias in Young Children?

Abstract

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.

Interactive virtual reality assessment of aggressive social information processing in boys with behaviour problems: A pilot study

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Autistic Traits and Aggressive Behavior in Chinese College Students: A Serial Mediation Model and the Gender Difference

“… 70 In addition, self-persuasion or other-persuasion can be adopted to reduce children’s hostile attributional bias and their aggressive behavior. 71 We assumed that these training methods could also be tried on autistic individuals and may be equally effective in reducing their aggressive behavior.…”

Estimating the effect of intergroup contact over years: evidence from a youth program in Israel

“…Ingroup censuring (Ditlmann and Samii, 2016) and policing (Fearon and Laitin, 1996) entail privately or publicly condemning an ingroup members’ aggression toward the outgroup. In terms of persuasion, people can convince their peers that outgroup members have benevolent instead of hostile intentions, thus disrupting hostile attribution biases (McGlothlin and Killen, 2006; van Dijk et al , 2019), or share the perspective of the outgroup with their ingroup members (Bruneau and Saxe, 2012).…”