“Was it meant to be mean?” Young children’s hostile attribution bias and intent attribution skills

Abstract

Two studies investigated whether young children's hostile attributional bias (i.e., the tendency to assume that others have hostile intentions) may be explained by a lack of intent attribution skills (i.e., the ability to correctly infer others’ intentions). We also investigated whether these intent attribution skills depend on children's false‐belief understanding. Children who lack false‐belief understanding may base their attributions on the observable outcomes of others’ behavior, rather than on others’ intentions. These hypotheses were tested by assessing intent attributions made by children ages 3–7 years. We systematically varied intent and outcome information in vignettes (Study 1, N = 151) and staged interactions with puppets (Study 2, N = 85). Results replicated across studies. Children who understood false belief (vs. those who did not) based their attributions more on intent information. However, these intent attribution skills did not affect children's hostile attributional bias. Exploratory analyses showed that children with higher levels of hostile attributional bias, more than others, based their attributions on outcome information. Thus, the findings from this research do not support the assumption that young children with a hostile attributional bias lack intent attribution skills; instead, the findings suggest that these children have a heightened sensitivity for negative outcomes.