Author(s)

Marine Houssa, Nathalie Nader-Grosbois, Alexandra Volckaert

Institute of Psychological Sciences, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.

In the literature, the tendency to attribute hostile intent is called “hostile attribution bias”. After ambiguous provocation, aggressive children are more likely than nonaggressive children to attribute a hostile intent to the peer. Children who make hostile attribution bias are generally more rejected by peers. However, it seems that nonaggressive children may also attribute hostile intentions to peers. The goals of these studies are 1) to detect the profile of young children who attribute hostile intentions and 2) to identify if there is difference between children who showed hostile attribution bias and those who did not. In the first study, 176 preschoolers were tested with the Unfair Card Game, that is a virtual game inducing frustration/provocation and including a high level of personal involvement. In the second study, 102 children were also tested with the Unfair Card Game, but also with some measures of social cognition. In both studies, parents and teachers completed some questionnaires. Results showed notably that children who displayed HAB manifested less positive affects and more negative affects during the frustration task. Compared with children who displayed no hostile attribution bias, children who did do so were perceived by teachers as more extraverted and by parents as having a higher level of externalizing behavior. It seems possible to identify children who made hostile attribution bias. Results are discussed in relation to the literature on the hostile attribution bias.

Hostile Attribution Bias, Preschoolers, Assessment

Houssa, M. , Nader-Grosbois, N. and Volckaert, A. (2018) Assessment of Hostile Attribution Bias in Early Childhood. Psychology, 9, 958-976. doi: 10.4236/psych.2018.95060.