The effects of different behavioral histories on girls' cognitive and liking judgment

The present study investigated, in analogue fashion, why rejected girls who engage in prosocial behavior may still be rejected by their peers. The investigation compared evaluations of an actress with a negative history of interaction, a positive history of interaction, or mixed history, examining liking, attribution and memory measures.;Preadolescent fourth and fifth grade girls (n = 56) viewed brief videotaped vignettes of two child actresses working or playing together. The primary actress portrayed either positive (prosocial), negative (aversive), or neutral (neither prosocial nor aversive) behaviors. Girls were randomly assigned to either the positive history condition (actress displayed mostly positive behaviors), the negative history condition (actress displayed mostly negative behaviors) or the no change condition (actress displayed equal positive, negative and neutral behaviors). All subjects then watched the behavior change condition, composed of equal proportions of positive, negative and neutral behaviors.;Dependent variables were administered in the behavior change condition and included: (a) Liking Ratings of the primary actress, (b) an Open-ended attribution measure, which evaluated frequency of spontaneous attributions, (c) a Likert-scale of internality of causal attributions (adult coders' internality ratings of girls' verbalized attributions were compared with girls' internality ratings). (d) a stability measure, which evaluated whether the girls saw the actress's behavior as stable or variable, (e) a measure in which girls recalled the actress's behaviors in the vignettes.;Planned comparisons indicated significant differences in liking as a function of history of interaction. Over time, the effects of history on liking diminished. These findings suggest that both the actress's history of interaction and her more recent behaviors influence girls' liking ratings.;History effects were also found on girls' internality and stability ratings. A negative attributional bias was found on internality ratings of the actress in the negative history condition. Adult coders' and girls' internality ratings were uncorrelated.;History effects also emerged with regard to girls' recall. Girls in the positive history condition recalled significantly more negative than positive behaviors and significantly more negative behaviors than the other history conditions. Although girls in the negative history condition recalled equivalent numbers of positive and negative behaviors, they recalled significantly more positive behaviors than girls in the other history conditions.