Developmental changes in the influence of assigned goals on cooperation and competition.

Abstract

We examined developmental changes in the influence of social goals on cooperative and competitive behavior in children between the ages of 6 and 13. Children played a game with a neutrally instructed peer under cooperative and individualistic instructions. The tendency to engage in cooperative and combative moves and to use attentional words varied interactively with age, sex, order of instructions, instructions, and trials. Older children adapted their cooperative behavior to fit assigned goals when individualistic trials preceded cooperation trials, but younger children did not. Older children adapted their competitive behavior on two of the five game trials, but younger children did not adapt their competitive behavior on any trials. We observed no developmental differences in the overall levels of cooperation and competition. However, younger children were more likely to use attentional words than older children, and both age groups used more attentional words under individualistic instructions than under cooperative instructions. The results suggest that older children were more flexible in adapting their social strategies to assigned goals. Flavell (1981), Markman (1981), Schmidt and Paris (1984), and others have proposed that, as they develop, children become more adept at coordinating behavioral strategies with social and cognitive goals. This improvement in coordination of strategies with goals can be caused by increases in the number of strategies available, more effective selection and use of available strategies, or both. Numerous demonstrations that older children are more likely to select goal-or task-appropriate strategies than younger children exist in both the cognitive and social literatures (e.g., Cosgrove & Patterson, 1977;Pressley, Forrest-Pressley, Elliot-Faust, & Miller, 1985). In these demonstrations, older children may benefit from cues associated with the physical context, the social context, task structure, or task stimuli in selecting and deploying effective strategies.Goal adaptation, however, involves more than simply selecting an appropriate strategy in order to pursue an assigned goal. Socially adept individuals would also be able to change their behavior to fit a new goal after successfully pursuing an opposing goal. The most difficult goal adaptation would involve changing behavioral strategies when all task parameters and their associated cues remained constant except the assigned social goal. Demonstrating behavioral change in such a situation would indicate a "flexibility" in strategy use (Schmidt & Paris, 1984) not evident if a child simply selects and deploys a goal-The study reported here was part of a larger project concerning experimental, sociometric, and self-report predictors of peer interaction. Other aspects of the project are reported in T. H. Ollendick & C. R. Schmidt (1987).We wish to thank Nancy Long, Tolly Will, Laurey Simkin, Jim Chadwick, Laurie Meyers, Sue Tomalis, and Greg Scanlon for their help in collecting and coding the data.

The Contextual Specificity of Masculinity and Femininity in Early Adolescence

“…Boys who worked on the co‐operative task reported greater masculinity than did girls in the same condition. Based on previous research (e.g., Schmidt et al., 1988), we had expected that both boys' and girls' reported masculinity would be greater in the competitive context compared to the co‐operative context. Findings from our manipulation check indicated that participants did not report more co‐operation in the co‐operative task compared to the competitive task.…”

“…We expected that early adolescents would find the task fun and familiar. Following the design employed by Schmidt et al (1988), we created co-operative and competitive contexts by altering task instructions.…”

“…With age, children more closely align their behavior with task demands. When instructed to play an individualistic, competitive game, fifth and sixth graders compared to fourth graders were more likely to use combative moves than co‐operative moves (Schmidt, Ollendick, & Stanowicz, 1988). Combative moves are consistent with stereotypes about masculine roles; co‐operative moves are consistent with stereotypes about feminine roles.…”

“…The co‐operative or competitive structure of the task was created by instructing participants to either interact co‐operatively or competitively to play the game. Research indicates that task instructions impact co‐operation and competition within an interaction (Schmidt et al., 1988). For the co‐operative task , participants were instructed to work together with their partner so that the tower did not fall.…”

What they want and what they get: The social goals of boys with ADHD and comparison boys

“…Rather than resulting from problem-solving or social-information processing deficits, problematic behavior in children may instead stem from the selection of goals that are inappropriate to particular social situations (Renshaw & Asher, 1982). Children's observed behavior and stated behavioral strategies appear to vary with their desired goals (Erdley & Asher, 1993;Lochman, Wayland, & White, 1993;Schmidt, Ollendick, & Stanowicz, 1988). Thus, investigation of "social agendas" may fuel insights into the 3Herein the terms attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and hyperactivity are used interchangeably.…”