Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between social cognition and reactive behaviors of victims in a situation where children were provoked by peers. Subjects were 293 elementary school children in the 4th, 5th, and 6th grades (149 boys and 144 girls). While presenting one hypothetical provocative situation, 15 social cognitive variables including 3 domains of social information processing (interpretation of provocative situations, goal-setting, utility judgement of reactive behaviors) and 4 reactive behaviors (assertive, aggressive, say nothing, crying) were assessed by means of self-report questionnaires. As a result of multiple regression analysis, it was found that these social cognitive variables were moderately correlated with all reactive behaviors. Especially, assertive goal-setting, friendly goal-setting, and utility judgement of assertive bahaviors were revealed to be important predictors of reactive behaviors. By additional analysis, hostile attributional bias which belonged to the domain of interpretation of provocative situations, was revealed to be a predictor of both assertive and friendly goal-settings.

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