Mother's Attributions and Control Behavior for Child's Misbehavior of Moral Norm and Prosocial Behavior

Original Article

Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association 2000;38(6):101-116.

아동의 도덕규범과 친사회적 문제행동 상황에서 어머니의 아동역량 판단 , 귀인 및 통제

신양재, 유안진

서울대학교 대학원 소비자아동학과 박사, 서울대학교 생활과학대학 소비자아동학부

Mother's Attributions and Control Behavior for Child's Misbehavior of Moral Norm and Prosocial Behavior

신양재, 유안진

ABSTRACT

This study integrated mother's control behavior of child's misbehavior within social domain analysis and the framework of attributional models of social cognition. The purpose of this study was to identify, compare and contrast maternal attributions and control responses according to child's age and domains of social behavior, and to investigate that mother's social cognition factors(authoritarian attitude and self competence perception) influence material inference and responses for their child's acts. Then this study was to find out whether mother's attribution would mediate their socialization techniques. For empirical research, 654 mothers with 5.6 year old and 8.9 year old children as subjects answered the structured questionnaire. The data were analyzed by frequencies, t-test, oneway ANOVA, and multiple regression. The major findings were as follows: First, according to child's two domains of misbehavior, there were differences in mothers'attribution and control behavior. Also mothers regarded older child's behavior as more dispositional cause and as more deserving of punishment than younger child's. Second, mother's authoritarian altitude of parenting, self-competence perception, and educational level were significantly related to mother's judgment. Third, the more authoritarian attitude mothers had, the more dispositional factor of children they attributed. And the lower self-competence mothers perceived. the more internal factor of child they attributed. Finally, maternal attributions and control responses are interrelated. When they attributed their children's misdeeds to internal dispositions, they respond with more stronger control behavior. The results suggested maternal social cognition mediate socialization behavior.