Abstract
In order to better understand why some children retaliate when they feel provoked and others do not, the present study identified “pacifistically-oriented” children who made negative interpretations in response to unambiguous provocations, yet did not endorse revenge goals, and compared them to “revenge-seeking” children who also made negative interpretations but did endorse revenge goals. Groups were identified based on seventh graders’ (N = 367; 54.77% male; 22.89% racial/ethnic minority) responses to hypothetical situations in which a peer excluded and insulted them. Comparing these groups revealed that Pacifists endorsed relationship-maintaining goals and emotion regulation goals more highly than Revenge-Seekers. Revenge-Seekers reported more anger and endorsed beliefs about negative reciprocity and aggression being legitimate more highly than Pacifists. Additionally, Revenge-Seekers were more disrespect sensitive than were Pacifists, based on a measure of vigilance for signs of disrespect and expectations that others would disrespect them. Together these findings point to social-cognitive and emotion-related processes that may inhibit revenge-seeking in unambiguous provocation situations, even when children interpret the peer’s behavior quite negatively.
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Notes
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The pattern of results for the ANOVAs examining acceptance and popularity, as well as the MANOVA for the behavioral nominations, were the same when nominations and acceptance ratings were standardized within gender and team.
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Acknowledgements
This article is based on an unpublished doctoral dissertation submitted to Duke University by the first author. The authors wish to thank dissertation committee members Philip Costanzo, Rick Hoyle, Mark Leary, Martha Putallaz, and Neil Vidmar for their contributions. The authors also would like to thank the children who participated in the study, the schools and teachers who helped to facilitate data collection, William Frye who helped with data collection, and Molly Stroud Weeks and Dan Blalock who helped with data entry.
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KM and SA conceived of the study and designed the study. KM collected the data and performed the statistical analyses. KM and SA collaborated on the interpretation of the findings and jointly wrote the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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The research reported in this manuscript was supported in part by: 1) a dissertation fellowship to the first author funded by a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Training Grant (T32 HD007376 19) to the Center for Developmental Science at the University of North Carolina; and 2) a dissertation fellowship to the first author from the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University.
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McDonald, K.L., Asher, S.R. Pacifists and Revenge-Seekers in Response to Unambiguous Peer Provocation. J Youth Adolescence 47, 1907–1925 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-017-0767-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-017-0767-4