Poster #222 - Mindset and Perceived Social Competence Moderate the Effect that Positive and Negative Peer Experiences Have on Stress

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Social Relationships

Integrative Statement

Introduction: The mindset model of social cognition and the self claims that school-age children perceives their attributes along a continuum that goes from static to changeable. Children who believe their attributes are changeable have an incremental perspective as they see their features as developing in incremental steps. Children who see their attributes as static are known as entity theorists because they see their abilities or attributes as fixed and enduring entities. It has been claimed that adolescents who hold an incremental view of personality are less likely to experience stress in response to a social failure (Yeager et al., 2014). This study examined this claim by assessing whether activation of the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis would show less activation following a negative experience with peers for children with an incremental rather than an entity perspective. We also assessed whether the difference between children with incremental and entity perspectives would be moderated by the degree to which they had a positive or negative view of their self concept.
Methods and measures: The sample consisted of 55 boys and 48 girls’ (n = 110) in fifth- and sixth-grade classrooms in a primary school. In the first phase, children completed a questionnaire that measured perceived social competence and mindset of personality. Four items derived from Harter’s Perceived Competence Scale for Children measured perceived social competence and four items indexed the use of an entity or incremental perspective. In the second phase, an event sampling procedure was used where children’s saliva samples were collected five times throughout the school day for a period of four days. Additionally, children rated on a seven point likert scale how positive or negative their experiences with their peers were prior to providing each saliva sample.
Results: The findings revealed that activation of the HPA axis in response to positive and negative peer interactions were moderated by mindset and perceived social competence. Specifically, children with an incremental view showed more activation of the HPA axis in response to positive and negative peer experiences when they had a positive view of their social competencies and less activation when they had a negative view. On the other hand, children with an entity view showed the highest levels of HPA axis activation in response to peer interactions when they had a negative view of their social competencies. However, those with a positive view of their social competencies showed the lowest level of HPA axis activation.
Conclusions: Consistent with the findings from Yeager et al. (2014), our results suggest that the incremental view and the entity view are differentially associated with children’s stress from negative social interactions. In addition, this study also serves to compliment the mindset literature as the results point to two unique elements; a) the activation of the HPA axis varies as a function of both positive and negative peer experiences, b) these relationships are moderated by mindset and perceived social competence and, c) the outcome of mindset on stress varies as a function of perceived social competence.

Authors

• melissa commisso, concordia
  Presenting Author

• William M. Bukowski, Concordia University
  Non-Presenting Author