| The purpose of this study was to test implicit theory change as a way to help young adolescents forgive a peer who hurt them deeply. Participants were 163 fourth, fifth, and sixth grade children aged 9(57), 10(56), and 11(48) with 2 withdrawn. Participants were recruited from community elementary and middle schools in a medium-sized Midwestern city and from area YMCA summer day camps. Implicit theories were assessed by the Implicit Theory Questionnaire (Erdley & Dweck, 1993), and levels of forgiveness and expectations to be hurt again were measured by the Enright Forgiveness Inventory for Children (EFI-C Enright, 1993) and the Offense Expectation Scale for Children and Adolescents (Beth) in Study 1. Results showed that those holding an incremental theory of attribution are more forgiving than those holding an entity view. Overall feelings of vulnerability to future hurt were higher for entity theorists. Being thought of as weak was a major concern to all of the children in this study.Study 2 measured the impact an intervention designed to change one's implicit theory from entity toward an incremental view would have on levels of forgiveness, expectations of future hurt, and levels of anger measure by the Beck Anger Inventory for Youth (BANI-Y). Participants were 54 of the 163 from Study 1 who subscribed to an entity theory, randomly assigned to an experimental (n = 27) and a control (n = 27) group. It was expected that young adolescents would become more forgiving and less worried about future hurt as their implicit theories changed. Analysis of variance revealed a significant interaction between the experimental and control groups in favor of the intervention, demonstrated by an increase in forgiveness for the experimental group at the immediate post-test and at the follow-up post-test, and a decrease in the concern for future hurt at the follow-up post-test. |
