TOY STORIES - AGGRESSION IN CHILDRENS NARRATIVES IN THE UNITED-STATES, SWEDEN, GERMANY, AND INDONESIA

One hundred twenty 4-year-old children (30 from each culture, half gir ls) told two stories using toys with aggressive and neutral cues. Pres chool teachers rated children's social competence and classroom behavi or and parents completed a questionnaire about their child-rearing pra ctices. Children's narratives were coded for length, complexity, story characteristics, thematic content, and number of aggressive words. Re sults showed that American children's narratives had more aggressive c ontent, aggressive words, unfriendly characters, and mastery of situat ions with aggression than those of the Swedish, German, and Indonesian children. Although there were cross-cultural differences in the frequ ency of aggression in the narratives, there were similar intracultural patterns in children's individual characteristics that were related t o aggression in the stories: The findings suggest that children's narr atives reflect their knowledge and experience of aggression in their c ulture.