Effects of attributions on mothers' behavioral and affective responses to children's behavior

Abstract

Scope and Method of Study: The goal of this study was to examine the effects of an experimental manipulation of mothers' attributions for their children's misbehavior on mothers' affect and disciplinary responses to misbehavior. A secondary goal was to identify maternal characteristics that may influence mothers' attributions and their consideration of mitigating information in the formation of responses to child behavior. Fifty mothers and their children, ages 36 to 59 months, participated. All mothers completed a demographic questionnaire, the Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory (ECBI), the Parenting Scale (PS), the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form (PSI-SF), the Maternal Attribution Questionnaire (MAQ), the Parenting Sense of Competence Scale (PSOC), and the Perceived Social Support Scale (PSSS). Mothers and children participated in a structured interaction task designed to elicit child misbehavior. Afterward, mothers viewed two videotaped segments of the interaction containing misbehavior, which served as stimuli for the assessment of mothers' attributions and subjective affect in response to the misbehavior. An observational code was used to record the videotaped mother and child behaviors. Analyses of variance (ANOVA), Pearson product-moment correlations, and chi-square analyses were used to test six hypotheses.

Findings and Conclusions: No significant differences were found in the types of attributions made by mothers for their children's misbehavior. The manipulation had no significant effect on mothers' subjective affect ratings or observed behavior during the tasks. There were no differences across conditions in any coded child behavior. No significant relationships were found between maternal characteristics and preexisting attributions, but relationships were found among maternal characteristics. Children's behavior problems were positively associated with parenting stress (r = .446) and negatively associated with parenting satisfaction (r = -.497). Perceived social support was negatively associated with stress (r = -.545). Pre-manipulation attribution scores using hypothetical stimuli were generally unrelated to post-interaction attribution scores using observed misbehavior as stimuli.