Children use make-believe aggression and violence to manage bad-tempered
peers

Date:
October 6, 2020
Source:
University of Cambridge
Summary:
Children are more likely to introduce violent themes into their
pretend play, such as imaginary fighting or killing, if they are
with playmates whom peers consider bad-tempered, new research
suggests. Academics believe that the tendency for children to
introduce aggressive themes in these situations - which seems to
happen whether or not they are personally easy to anger - may be
because they are 'rehearsing' strategies to cope with hot-headed
friends.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Children are more likely to introduce violent themes into their pretend
play, such as imaginary fighting or killing, if they are with playmates
whom peers consider bad-tempered, new research suggests.


========================================================================== Academics from the University of Cambridge believe that the tendency
for children to introduce aggressive themes in these situations -- which
seems to happen whether or not they are personally easy to anger -- may be because they are 'rehearsing' strategies to cope with hot-headed friends.

The finding comes from an observational study of more than 100 children
at a school in China, who were asked to play with toys in pairs. Children
whose play partners were considered bad-tempered by their peers were
45% more likely to introduce aggressive themes into their pretend play
than those whose partners were reckoned to be better at controlling
their temper.

Importantly, however, a child's own temperament did not predict the level
of make-believe aggression. Instead, children often appeared to introduce
these themes specifically in response to having an irritable playmate.

This may mean that in certain cases aggressive make-believe play actually
helps children's social and emotional development. The paper's authors
stress, however, that further research will be needed before they can
provide definitive guidance for parents or practitioners.

Dr Zhen Rao, from the Centre for Research on Play in Education,
Development and Learning (PEDAL), at the Faculty of Education, University
of Cambridge, said: "If children have a friend who is easily angered,
and particularly if they haven't coped well with that behaviour, it's
possible that they will look for ways to explore it through pretend
play. This gives them a safe context in which to try out different ways
of handling difficult situations next time they crop up in real life." Aggressive pretend play has been the subject of considerable wider
research, much of which aims to understand whether it predicts similarly aggressive real- life behaviours. Most of these studies, however, tend
to focus on whether these associations are linked to the child's own temperament, rather than that of the children they are playing with.



==========================================================================
The Cambridge study aimed to understand how far aggressive pretend
play is associated with a play partner's anger expression. It also distinguished between aggressive pretend play and its 'non-aggressive, negative' variant: for example, pretend play that involves imagining
someone who is sick or unhappy.

The research was carried out with 104 children, aged seven to 10, at a
school in Guangzhou in China, as part of a wider project that the team
were undertaking in that region.

Participants were asked to organise themselves into pairs -- many of
them therefore picking friends -- and were then filmed playing for 20
minutes. The toys they were given was deliberately neutral in character
(for example, there were no toy weapons), and the children could play
however they wanted.

The researchers then coded 10-minute samples of each pair in 120
five-second segments, earmarking instances of pretend play, aggressive
themes, and non- aggressive negative themes.

Separately, they also asked peers to rate the children's tendency to
become angry. Each of the 104 children in the study was rated by, on
average, 10 others, who were asked to decide whether they were good at
keeping their temper, easily angered, or 'somewhere in between'.



==========================================================================
The researchers then analysed the data using a statistical model called
an Actor-Partner Interdependence Model, which is a means of measuring
and testing the influence that two individuals have on one another. This allowed them to work out how far children were playing a certain way
of their own volition, and how far they were being influenced by their
partner.

On average, the children spent only about a fifth of their recorded
session participating in pretend play, of which around 10% involved
aggressive themes and 8% involved non-aggressive negative themes. Pretend
play was observed in all children. More than half (53.5%) showed at least
one instance of aggressive pretend play, and 43% of the children showed
at least one instance of negative pretend play.

The children's own ability to control their temper, as reported by their
peers, did not significantly predict how much their pretend play involved aggressive themes. If they had a play partner who was considered quick
to anger, however, they were 45% more likely to create pretend situations
that involved some sort of aggressive element. This percentage is to some extent shaped by how the data was segmented, but nonetheless indicates
a greater likelihood that children will do this if they are playing with someone peers regard as easy to anger.

There was no evidence to suggest that either child's temperament
influenced the frequency of non-aggressive, negative pretend play. The researchers also found that boys were 6.11 times likelier to engage in aggressive pretend play than girls.

The theory that children may introduce these themes to rehearse ways
of handling bad-tempered peers is only one possible explanation. For
example, it may also represent an attempt to stop playmates becoming
angry by giving them a pretend situation in which to 'let off steam',
or simply to keep them playing by appealing to their nature.

"Our study highlights the importance of taking into account a social
partner's emotional expression when understanding aggressive pretend
play," Rao added.

"Further research is clearly needed to help us better understand this
in different social contexts. The possibility that children might be
working out how to handle tricky situations through pretend play suggests
that for some children, this could actually be a way of developing their
social and emotional skills." The research is published in the British
Journal of Developmental Psychology.

Dr Rao's research is funded by an ESRC postdoctoral Fellowship.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Cambridge. The original
story is licensed under a Creative_Commons_License. Note: Content may
be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Zhen Rao, Elian Fink, Jenny Gibson. Dyadic association between
aggressive
pretend play and children's anger expression. British Journal of
Developmental Psychology, 2020; DOI: 10.1111/bjdp.12352 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201006114225.htm

--- up 6 weeks, 1 day, 6 hours, 50 minutes
* Origin: -=> Castle Rock BBS <=- Now Husky HPT Powered! (1337:3/111)