Appraisal of accountability and intentionality of action, and of degree of damage, as predictors of anger and sadness, and of their regulation

Anger, a basic emotion, is typically elicited by negative events that constitute obstacles to one’s own goals, including the integrity of one’s own valued possessions. AIMS AND HYPOTHESES. The study tested, with reference to developmental changes, whether the appraisals of an agent’s accountability and intentionality in damaging one’s own property, moderated by damage seriousness, contribute to define children’s and pre-adolescents’ anger intensity, and related sadness at the loss, and to shape their behaviours toward the agent, as well as their behavioural regulation. METHOD. Subjects. The study tested 4 age groups: 7-8, 9-10, 11-12 and 14-15 year-olds; N total: 329, 160 males and 169 females. Experimental stimuli and Procedure. In their own classroom, children judged each of 6 vignettes that varied for the extent of property Damage (2 levels: Small, Big) and peer agent’s Accountability and Intentionality (for short: Intentionality, 3 levels: Unintentional Accountability (agent damages object by accident), Unknown Accountability-Intentionality, Intentional Accountability (agent damages object out of envy)). For each vignette, children answered questions about how Angry, and Sad, they would feel, on a 5 point scale (not at all-very much), and Why (open control question, the answers to which were coded into a dozen of categories using a mixed top-down bottom-up method). Children also rated 8 behaviours (e.g, physical and verbal aggression, asking for adult intervention, talking with the agent, taking revenge, crying) as regards the extent to which they would Enact them, and Feel like enacting them, on a 3-point graphic scale (0= Little, I would do it/I would want to do it, 000=2, I would do it/I would want to do itvery much . The discrepancy between Enacted and Desired behaviours constitue a measure of Anger regulation. RESULTS. FELT EMOTIONS: ANGER and SADNESS. The analyses of children’s answers showed that both Intentionality and Damage (repeated within-subjects measures) were significant factors: both Anger and Sadness were greater when the agent’s behavior was Intentional rather than Unintentional or Unknown (the latter two typically did not differ much), and the damage was Big rather than Small (e.g., the girl’s doll or the boy’s Power Ranger (8-year olds) , or the (14-year old’s) mobile phone are broken rather than damaged a little). Intentionality and Damage interacted significantly: a big damage elicited great anger even when done unintentionally, but intentional damage, irrespective of its seriousness, elicited the greatest anger. Age and sex often significantly interacted with the experimental factors, in the expected directions. For instance, 8-year-olds typically felt the lowest anger of all, and 14-year-olds the most if the damage was big. Gender did not differentiated anger for 14-year-olds when damage was small, whereas when damage was big boys felt more angry than girls irrespective of intentionality; at 12 years, boys were angrier than girls for small damage that was unintentional or of an unknown cause. Sadness typically obtained results similar to those found for anger (e.g, significant effects of both Intentionality and Damage; girls’ sadness typically was more intense than boys’, especially when the damage was intentional, and fr the two younger groups), but generally was less intense than anger. MOTIVATIONS FOR FELT EMOTIONS. The analyses of children’s answers to the open questions on their Motivations for felt Anger clearly showed that children indeed took into account whether the damage had been intentional or not, and whether it could have been avoided, motivating their anger also with moral negative judgements both on the agent and on the act (mainly older subjects), especially if the damage was big; children further underlined the fact that the damaged obiect had a (economic or affective) value for them. Overall, in other words, the open-question answers confirmed the relevance of the two appraisal dimensions of Intentionality and Damage. Motivations for felt Sadness similarly evidenced the influence of the two appraisal dimensions, but showed less variability than the anger ones and focused mostly on the damaged object’s value (around 30 to 40 % of subiects for each story) and on the fact that it had been damaged, and, when the damage was big, on intentional accountability and on negative moral judgements of the agent. ENACTED AND DESIRED BEHAVIOURS. The analyses of children’s ratings of the 8 behaviours on a 3 point scale again showed that insulting, asking for a reimbourse of the damaged object, calling in an adult, insulting the agent, and talking calmly about the action with the agent were the most frequently enacted behaviors (over all 6 vignettes, in decreasing order of enactment), whereas crying, hitting the agent, and breaking an agent’s object in turn were the least frequent. On average, males were more likely to enacht any behavior than females, and enactment linearly decreased with age. As expected, the likelyhood of a specific enacted behavior was influenced by both Intentionality and Damage, in the expected direction – e.g., talking calmly about the action with the agent were least likely when damage was intentional, either big or small, whereas all ‘aggressive’ behaviors were in the same conditions very likely. Generally speaking, girls were more likely than boys to enact socially acceptable behaviors. The ‘desired behaviors’, that is, what the child felt like doing, generally showed higher mean rating than the enacted behaviours, thus pointing out that anger tendencies are regulated. The discrepancy over all behaviors was greatest for the two intermediate age groups – 10- and 12-year-olds, a result that ought to be consired taking into account the fact that, as reported above, 8-year-olds were most likely to enact any behavior, and 14-year-olds the least likely. Age groups, at any rate, differed the most for the situation of small damage of unknown cause. CONCLUSION. In sum the results obtained in this study - on the whole replicating those obtained in a previous one with a sample of 235 8- to 13-year-olds (Zammuner, 1993) - offer strong experimental support to the hypothesis – put forward recently also by appraisal theorists (e.g., Smith & Kirby 2004) that appraisals of an agent’s accountability and intentionality in provoking a damage, moderated by appraisals of damage seriousness, and thus of motivational relevance, contribute to define children’s and pre-adolescents’ anger and related sadness at the loss, and to shape their behaviours toward the agent, as well as their behavioural regulation