Youths’ Blame Attributions to Victims and Perpetrators: Associations with Age and Peer Conflict Role

• In Event: Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Topic - Moral Development

Abstract

According to Social Domain Theory, experiences of harm can help youth develop their moral judgements and make sense of their social world (Smetana et al., 2014). In their everyday lives, children are likely to have experiences of harm both as victims and as perpetrators. Taking these different roles may help children and adolescents make increasingly sophisticated judgments about their own and others’ roles in peer conflict (Wainryb et al., 2005). Nevertheless, how they attribute blame to themselves and their peer across these two different roles has not been examined. This study examined youths’ blame attributions to victims and perpetrators in conflicts with friends. In particular, we were interested in whether youths’ blame attributions differed depending on their role in the conflict (i.e., whether they were described as the victim or perpetrator), and whether their judgments varied with age.
This study was based on a sample of 202 participants, divided into groups of 8-, 12-, and 17-year-olds (ns = 69, 58, and 75, respectively). Participants provided ratings of blame on a four-point scale in response to two vignettes: one vignette portrayed the child as the victim (“Your friend got mad and insulted you”) and the other portrayed the child as the perpetrator (“You got mad and insulted your friend”). For each vignette, participants rated the extent to which they blamed themselves (e.g., it was my fault), their friend (e.g., it was my friend’s fault), or neither party (e.g., it was no one’s fault).
Results suggested that youth blamed perpetrators more than victims overall. Nevertheless, some patterns of blame attributions were moderated by age (see Figure 1). Specifically, when youth were assigned to the victim perspective, 8-year-olds were particularly to blame the perpetrators relative to victims, whereas this pattern was attenuated for older groups. Similarly, in the perpetrator role, differences in blame judgments of perpetrators and victims were attenuated for 17-year-olds. In terms of blaming neither party, across both roles, 7-year-olds were particularly likely to agree that the conflict was “no one’s fault” (See Figure 2).
Taken altogether, these results suggest that older adolescents are more likely to simultaneously consider the ways in which both victims and perpetrators contribute to conflict. Furthermore, adolescents’ patterns of blame judgments may reflect their greater sense of agency and responsibility, inasmuch as they were less likely to indicate that no one was responsible for the conflict. Our results add to the limited research that explicitly compares and contrasts victim and perpetrator roles, and suggest that youths’ thinking about responsibility evolves from middle childhood to late adolescence. Further exploration should include the role of moral emotions of children in their blame attributions (Wainryb and Recchia, 2012).

Authors

• Julie Guindon, Centre universitaire de santé McGill
  Presenting Author

• Holly E Recchia, Concordia University
  Non-Presenting Author

• CECILIA WAINRYB, University of Utah
  Non-Presenting Author

• Melanie A Dirks, McGill University
  Non-Presenting Author