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Show 107 college of social & behavioral science Parents have multiple socialization goals, including promoting children's positive self-views, and instilling positive moral values. When children exhibit prosocial behavior, parents can respond in ways that simultaneously promote both goals. However, when children's behavior hurts others, it presents a unique challenge: how can parents address the wrongdoing while also supporting their children's positive self-views? Our study examined how mothers' interpretations of their child's behavior might inform these issues. Specifically, we examined 101 mothers' judgments of their child's harmful and helpful behavior across a wide age range (6, 11, and 16 year-old children). Children nominated two events in which they harmed and helped a friend, respectively; their mothers then evaluated each action. Mother's responses were coded for their tendency to provide explanations for children's behavior. Subsequently, these explanations were coded for whether they (a) justified whether the action was ok or not ok, and (b) were event-specific (i.e., she was tired) or generalizable (i.e., he is helpful). Results revealed that mothers offered more explanations for the child's harmful than helpful behavior. Explanations for harm were also more event-specific than those for help. Not surprisingly, for help events, mothers' explanations were overwhelmingly used to justify the positivity of the action. However, 77% of explanations for children's harmful behavior were also used to justify why the child's behavior was okay. Results imply that, because children's prosociality does not pose a challenge to parental goals as harmful actions, parents may not feel as compelled to explain children's helpful acts. Results also suggest that most parents view their children with unconditional positive regard. Con-sistent with this, by giving event-specific explanations for harm, parents avoid concluding that their child's negative disposition or character is the cause of their misbehavior. These findings provide novel information about parental moral socialization surrounding children's everyday experiences of harm and help. "IT'S OK TO BE MAD, EVEN WHEN YOU'RE WRONG"; MOTHER'S EXPLANATIONS FOR THEIR CHILDREN'S HARMFUL AND HELPFUL BEHAVIOR Jessica Robinson (H. Recchia, Cecilia Wainryb) Department of Psychology University of Utah UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH ABSTRACTS Jessica Robinson H. Recchia Cecilia Wainryb |
