Training fourth graders in compromising and persuasive strategies

Can children be trained to improve their compromising and persuasive skills? In this project, an instructional program was devised to train children in compromising strategies and in accommodating to others in their persuasive messages. The training modules were quite successful in improving fourth graders’ tendencies to compromise. Improvement in performance on persuasive tasks was limited to better accommodation to the views of others only when the children were assisted by external probes. Children who profited most from instruction in compromising had more restricted and less psychologically oriented construct systems.