Personal responsibility antecedents of anger and blame reactions in children

The potential cognitive basis for anger in children was investigated by having 5-, 6-, 9-, 11-, and 15-year-old children offer moral evaluations and anger judgments about 8 incidents of property damage that differed in terms of the perpetrator's personal responsibility. Personal responsibility was manipulated by varying the events in terms of 3 dimensions: avoidability, intentionality, and motive acceptability. Results showed that these dimensions similarly affected children's moral- and anger-related judgments. Children's use of the personal responsibility dimensions was also associated with giving lower anger judgments, which suggests that anger instigation to property damage is moderated by the ability to take a normative perspective on transgressions.