2016 Volume 27 Issue 4 Pages 418-428
The purpose of this research was to consider the influence of expressions of kindness from others on children's subsequent development of social information processing (SIP) styles during ambiguous provocative situations. A total of 247 children from grades 4–6 of elementary school completed a questionnaire based on the SIP model, and structural equation modeling was used to verify causality of each variable. For both children who had reported receiving expressions of kindness from others and those that had not, hostile attributions were inversely related to friendly goal setting, and friendly goal setting was inversely related to aggressive behaviors, suggesting a positive relationship to behaviors demonstrating anger restraint. An ANOVA was conducted to verify the influence of others' expressions of kindness, age, and sex on SIP. The results suggested that negative SIP styles in children increased significantly with age, and negative SIP styles were possibly moderated by expressions of kindness from others.
