REPUTATION INFORMATION AND TEACHER FEEDBACK - THEIR INFLUENCES ON CHILDRENS PERCEPTIONS OF BEHAVIOR PROBLEM PEERS

Children readily make use of reputation-like information about peers i n processing socially relevant stimuli in their evaluations of peers. The purpose of the present study was to examine how teacher feedback i nfluences children's evaluations of a hypothetical peer for whom they had one of three types of expectancies (liked, neutral, disliked). Fir st and second grade children (n = 112) viewed a videotape of a teacher describing five child actors. Reputation information (liked, neutral, disliked) varied only for the target actor, while the four other acto rs were described in neutral terms. In a second videotape of a classro om scene, the target actor received one of three types of teacher feed back (audio portion of the tape): a) neutral; b) positive; or c) negat ive feedback. Measures of preference, moral judgment, and behavioral d escriptions were collected. Results specific to the target actor revea led an interaction between feedback and reputation as well as main eff ects for both factors. Planned contrasts indicated that teacher praise caused the disliked target to be viewed as more deserving of reward a nd nominated for fewer negative descriptors. Negative teacher feedback caused the target of any reputational status to be rated as less lika ble, less deserving of reward, and more likely to engage in inappropri ate behavior. Methodological improvements are discussed addressing una nticipated findings apparently due to salience effects and expectancy- incongruent information. Clinical implications include the need to ass ess multiple dimensions of peer perception and how they might be influ enced.