Biased decision-making processes in aggressive boys.

Abstract

Recent evidence has suggested that aggressive boys demonstrate a bias toward attributing hostility to peers in unwarranted circumstances. This study explored two aspects of cognitive processing that might be related to attributional bias: speed of decision making and selective recall of hostile cues. Groups of aggressive and nonaggressive boys at three age levels participated in a detective game in which the task was to accumulate evidence in order to decide whether or not a peer had acted with benevolence or hostility. Aggressive boys were found to respond more quickly and with less attention to available social cues than nonaggressive boys. Aggressive boys also overattributed hostility to peers in unwarranted circumstances, but only when they responded quickly. This restriction suggested that training aggressive boys to respond more slowly could lead to fewer biased attributions on their part. Selective recall was also related to biased attributions, for both groups of boys. This suggested that training boys to recall all cues nonselectively could reduce the frequency of their biased attributions. The results are discussed in terms of a cognitive model of aggressive behavior. Because of the correlational nature of this study, the conclusions are stated as tentative. Recently, researchers have suggested that biases in children's social perceptions may act as mediators of deviant interpersonal aggressive behavior. Nasby, Hayden, and DePaulo (1980), for example, found that institutionalized aggressive boys display an attributional bias toward interpreting social cues from others as displays of hostility, even when the cues were meant to be benign. Similarly, Dodge (1980) found that in reaction to an ambiguously intended frustrating event, aggressive boys responded behaviorally as if the peer instigator had malevolently intended the act, whereas nonaggressive boys responded as if the peer had acted benignly. In a second study, Dodge also found that aggressive boys were more likely to attribute hostility to peers in ambiguous situations than nonaggressive boys were. The importance of this attributional bias in understanding interpersonal behavior is reflected in the work of Kelley and Stahelski (1970), who demonstrated in a different context that such attributional biases could lead to interpersonal conflicts that perpetuate the biased judgments. Support for this research was provided by a grant from the Spencer Foundation. The authors would like to acknowledge the support of administrators and teachers of the Monroe County Community School Corporation and the individual contributions of Cynthia Frame, Bryan Burke, and Scott Robbins.