Children's Use of Intentionality in Judgments of Character and Disposition

Abstract

ROTENBERG, KEN J. Children's Use of Intentionality in Judgments of Character and Disposition. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1980, 51, 282-284. Jones and Davis hypothesized that the attribution of intentionality is a critical determinant of dispositional inferences. In order to investigate the applicability of this hypothesis to children, children from 3 grade levels were presented with stories that depicted actors who intentionally or accidentally caused harm. It was expected that children (a) would judge actors who intentionally caused harm as comparatively more mean and less likable, and (b) would predict that such actors would behave in an aggressive and unhelpful fashion in the future. This pattern of judgment was manifested by children from both second and fourth grades. While kindergarten children's judgments of meanness and liking conformed to the expected pattern, they failed to predict the behavior of the actors in the expected fashion. The findings were interpreted as supporting the applicability of Jones and Davis's hypothesis to children, with the qualification that young children may not attribute dispositional characteristics, but instead may limit attributions to specific characteristics that do not have long-term behavioral implications.