Poster #226 - I'm respectful. Why don’t they like me?: Evaluator impact of showing respect on social competence

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Social Relationships

Integrative Statement

Parents and teachers often encourage children to show respect or be respectful to others. At the same time, being respected by peers is key to children’s social competence (Kuryluk ,Cohen, & Audley, 2011). However, if children show respect to their peers, does it mean that their peers evaluate them as respectful? Piaget (1932/1952) argues that respect as a reciprocal act (“I will respect you so that you will respect me”) demands social interaction and coordination. For this reason, some showing respect behaviors that are unrecognized by peers may not be treated as respectful, and instead, may contribute to a child’s poor social competence. When and how are children’s showing respect to peers related to their social competence in middle childhood?

The present study examines the mediation effects of self and peer evaluations of showing respect on social competence across four levels of social complexity: individual (individual social competence; SCi); and interactions (physical victimization and overt aggression); relationships (mutual friends) and group (peer group social competence; SCgl). See Figure 1.

Method
Participants were 216 children in grades 3-5 ( 51% girls, 60% White) in a public elementary school in the Mid south. The children completed self reports (SE) for individual level social competence (SCi; showing respect, loneliness, Asher et al., 1984; self-esteem and social competence, Harter, 1985; peer optimism, Deptula et al., 2006) peer reports (PE) for interactions (overt aggression, physical victimization, and showing respect, using Masten’s 1984 revised class play procedure) and peer nominations for relationships (number of mutual friends) and group level social competence (SCgl; i.e., Social preference, Coie et al., 1982). All measures were standardized by classroom.

Results
All models were run with M-plus 7.4 (Múthen & Múthen, 1998- 2017), with bias corrected bootstrapping (n = 10000) and maximum likelihood (ML) as the estimation method. Model fit was adequate, CFI = 1.00; TFL = 1.00; RMSEA = .00; 90% CI RMSEA = .00-.06; SRMR = .02.

To highlight a few findings, there were no indirect effects for SE showing respect, but SE showing respect was negatively related to SCgl. The negative relation may occur between self-evaluations of (SE) showing respect and SCgl when showing respect is not accepted as part of social competence, that is, showing respect is not interpreted by the target as intended (e.g., Piaget, 1932/1952).

In addition, PE showing respect partially mediated our through mutual friends and overt aggression, to peer group social competence SCgl.
Our results highlight that showing respect evaluator affected whether or not showing respect mediated across levels of social complexity. We believe this is because peers do not have access to the same information when evaluating one another’s behaviors (Dirks et al., 2010), the necessary coordination for recognizing intended respectful behaviors (Piaget, 1932/1952). Our study suggest that parents and teachers should be careful of providing the blanket statement of “show respect” as a way to promote positive peer relations, as the evaluator of the child showing respect also influences how it functions in promoting social competence.

Author

• Shannon Audley, Smith College
  Presenting Author