Parental Influence Techniques: An Attributional Analysis

DIx, THEODORE, and GRUSEC, JOAN E. Parental Influence Techniques: An Attributional Analysis. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1983, 54, 645-652. This study examined (a) social inferences presumed by attribution theorists to mediate the internalization of behavior and (b) parents' understanding of these inferences in their children. Participants at 4 age levels (5 years old to adult) made casual attributions for the helping of story characters and rated the extent to which these characters possessed an altruistic trait. In addition, a parent group predicted their children's attributions and trait ratings. Story characters helped under various conditions of parental influence including power assertion, modeling, and reasoning. The findings support an attributional analysis. Power assertion produced external attributions and discounting of altruistic traits. Modeled and spontaneous helping produced internal attributions and stronger inferences about the presence of altruistic traits. While causal attributions conformed to an MSC attribution schema among 5-6-year-olds, trait ratings did not do so until children were 8-9 years old. For females the addition of reasoning made attributions for helping induced with power assertion more internal and attributions for spontaneous helping more external. Parents appeared to have some skill at predicting their children's attributions.