The Role of Self-Focused Attention in Children's Attributions of Social Emotions to the Self

Previous research (Bennett, 1989) has suggested that prior to the age of about 9 or 10 years, children's self-attributions of social emotions such as embarrassment are contingent, not upon the presumed evaluations of the self, but upon others' overt reactions toward the self. Apparently, children's self-attributions reflect a process of aversive conditioning; children do not understand how their actions affect their public image, but do find embarrassing experiences unpleasant because of behavior such as criticism, teasing, and laughter. This conclusion was derived from the finding that 5- and 8-year-old children attribute embarrassment to the self when in the presence of an active (i.e., derisive) audience, but not in the presence of a passive audience. However, 11- and 13-year-old children find any type of audience potentially embarrassing. An alternative explanation for this finding is that active audiences may serve to induce self-focused attention, and that it is the consequent evaluation of the self, not others' punishing behavior, that prompts self-attributions of embarrassment. This experiment indicated that the latter explanation better accounts for 8-year-olds', but not 5-year-olds', social emotions.