Children's Anticipated Responses to Hypothetical Peers With Undesirable Characteristics: Role of Peers' Desire to Change, Effort to Change, and Outcome

ABSTRACT

The authors explored the extent to which 5th- and 6th-grade students’ anticipated responses to hypothetical peers with undesirable characteristics (e.g., being overweight) are influenced by information that each peer (a) desired (or did not desire) to change the characteristic, (b) exerted effort (or did not exert effort) to change the characteristic, and (c) was successful (or unsuccessful) in changing the characteristic. In general, the children anticipated responding more favorably to peers who were successful in overcoming an undesirable characteristic than those who were unsuccessful. However, across both outcome conditions, peers who wanted to change and exerted effort to change were rated more favorably than were peers who reported no effort to change an undesirable characteristic, regardless of whether or not they had expressed a desire to change that characteristic. For peers whose failure to change an undesirable characteristic was associated with no effort to change, those who expressed a desire to change were rated more favorably than those who expressed no desire to change.

Keywords:

• desire
• effort
• peer evaluation
• social cognition

Notes

1. There were very few instances in which a child failed to provide a response to a statement on a questionnaire. Missing data were handled using the mean replacement approach.

2. Because the age range of the participants in the present study was so narrow, no grade-related differences were expected in the children's responses to peers as a function of the peers’ desire to change, effort to change, or outcome. The results of a preliminary ANOVA that included the grade of the participant as a variable were consistent with this expectation.

3. Six different undesirable characteristics and six desire–effort–outcome conditions were incorporated as within-subject variables in the design of the present study, yielding a total of 36 cells. An adequate comparison of the impact of the various conditions on the children's anticipated responses to peers with specific undesirable characteristics would have required a minimum of 360 participants (assuming a minimum of 10 participants per cell).