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Children's understanding of disclaimers

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 13:36 authored by Dawn Watling, Robin BanerjeeRobin Banerjee
Individuals who anticipate poor performance on some imminent task often offer disclaimers-verbal statements which serve to protect them from negative social evaluation by dissociating the poor performance from their identity. In the present study, 7- to 14-year-olds (N = 226) responded to hypothetical vignettes where the protagonists either used or did not use a disclaimer when telling a peer audience that they did not expect to perform well on an imminent task. Children made predictions about the evaluations that the peer audience would form of the protagonists, regarding both their imminent performance and their typical performance. Children over 10 years of age recognized that a disclaimer would lead the audience to form a more favorable impression of the protagonists' typical performance. Further, boys who were more preferred by their classmates tended to have a better understanding of the social evaluation consequences of using a disclaimer. Results are discussed in the light of research on children's growing self-presentational awareness

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Social Cognition

ISSN

0278-016X

Publisher

Guilford Publishing

Issue

1

Volume

30

Page range

18-36

Department affiliated with

  • Psychology Publications

Notes

887EJ Times Cited:1 Cited References Count:46

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-12-04

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