The Interactions Among Pretend Play, Aggression, and Anger in Preschool-Aged Children

• In Event: Emotional Competence from Infancy to Late Childhood

Abstract

Introduction
Aggression and pretend play both tend to peak around the preschool years (Alink et al., 2006; Tremblay et al., 2004; Russ, 2004). The mastery hypothesis proposes that children work through and process negative affect with aggression in their pretend play, which results in less aggression outside of play, and previous research has supported this theory regarding aggression in play (Feshbach, 1956; Mussen & Rutherfore, 1961). Although anger may manifest as aggression, it is an independent construct, and no studies have examined the role anger plays in the relationship between aggression and pretend play. Thus, the purpose of the current study was to examine relationships among pretend play, aggression, and anger in preschool-aged children.
Methods
Participants were 37 children aged 4 to 5 years old. Participants were primarily male (62.2%) and Caucasian (64.9%). Using a repeated measures two-group design, participants’ mood and aggression in pretend play were measured. Specifically, all participants completed a standardized play task and a measure of mood at Time 1. An anger induction task was then provided to all participants, and mood was measured again (Time 2). Next, participants in the treatment group engaged in a standardized play task for 5 minutes, and participants in the control group watched an emotionally neutral video for 5 minutes. A final mood assessment was obtained for all participants at the end of the 5 minutes (Time 3). It was hypothesized that the frequency of aggression in play would increase after inducing anger (Time 1 to Time 2). It was further hypothesized that there would be a greater improvement in mood in the treatment group (after playing) from Time 2 to Time 3 compared to the active control group controlling for passage of time.
Results
The mood induction appeared effective as, on average, partici
pants selected a worse mood after the mood induction procedure than they did prior to the mood induction procedure, t(36) = -3.52, p =.001. Participants exhibited more Total Aggression in their pretend play after the mood induction than they did before the mood induction, t(19) = -3.71, p = .001. A trend indicated that participants in the treatment group may have showed a better mood at Time 3 than the control group when gender was controlled for, F(2, 70) = 2.61, p = .072, partial η2 = .07.
Discussion
The novel mood induction method used in this study was effective in inducing anger in preschool-aged children. Moreover, results of this study indicated that children tended to display more aggression in their play after being angered. However, the difference in final mood between children who were allowed to play after being angered compared to a control group controlling for passage of time did not reach statistical significance. Given the trend towards significance and that the mood induction in this study was relatively mild, future studies should examine the role of play as a coping strategy in situations that induce more extreme anger. Additional future directions and implications for socioemotional development will be discussed.

Authors

• Kristen Boog, Southern Illinois University
  Presenting Author

• Karla K. Fehr, Southern Illinois University
  Non-Presenting Author