The Influence Of External Characteristics On Trait Attribution In 4-to7-year Olds

Attribution refers to the process of reasoning about the causes of one's own or others' behaviors.For children,attribution is an important social cognitive ability.In the past,researchers mainly focused on when children were able to make trait attributions based on other people's behaviors and explain or predict other people's behaviors based on individual characteristics.Trait is a stable characteristic of individual,which can predict the behavior of others.However,when interpreting and attributing the behavior of others,we will affected by various external characteristic factors.The external characteristic factors in this study are different from the stable personality traits.It includes the social category characteristic which the individual intuitively displays and the state characteristic(physical state and emotional state)which expresses through the words.It is not clear whether these external characteristic influence trait attributions in children.A total of 131 children aged among 4 to 7 years old participated in this study.The methods used to evaluate the influence of external characteristics on trait attribution in 4-7 years is the situational story.The main results of this study are as follows:1.All children aged 4-7 years old can make trait attributions to the others based on the behavior outcomes(positive and negative),and there is no significant difference between the ages.All children aged 4-7 years old can attribute positive behavior to his/her "nice",and negative behavior to his/her "mean",which verifies the previous research results.2.The social category characteristics will have an impact on trait attribution of children aged 4-7 years,and there is no significant difference between ages.Specifically,when others show a positive behavior,children tend to attribute individuals with abnormal social category characteristics(obesity or accent)more based on social category information than individuals with normal social category characteristics.When others show a negative behavior,social categorical characteristics have no effect on children's trait attribution.3.The state characteristics(physical state,emotional state)will have an impact on trait attribution of children aged 4-7 years,and there is no significant difference between ages.Specifically,when others show a positive behavior,compared with individuals in a negative state,children make attributions based more on the state information of individuals in a positive state(physical comfort,happy mood).When others show a negative behavior,children make attributions based more on state information about individuals who are in a negative state(physical discomfort,bad mood)than individuals who are in a positive state.4.This study investigate the influence of social category characteristics and state characteristics(physical state,emotional state)on trait attribution in 4-7 years,and use cluster analysis to explore individual differences in the attribution process of children.The results showed that 58.97% of the children showed trait attribution bias;30.77% of children showed mixed attribution bias;10.26% of the children showed situational attribution bias,and there is no significant difference between ages..Conclusion: 4-7 years old children can make attributions based on behaviors.But when provide the external characteristic information of the others to children,these external characteristic information will influence the trait attributions of children to some extent.;Children have stable attributional bias in attributing other people's behaviors,which are manifested as trait attribution bias,mixed attribution bias and situational attribution bias.