Developmental changes in the attribution of blame.

A story completion test was constructed to measure developmental changes in the methods used by children to assign blame in situations where the cause of unpleasant events was left ambiguous. Ss were 115 elementary school children between the ages of 5 and 12 years. The tendency to blame others decreased with age whereas responses involving sharing of blame or recognition of impersonal and accidental causes increased with age. The story completion method provides a simple way of measuring behavior in this important area of personality development. The findings suggest that a valuable tool for personality assessment of children could be constructed from the stories used in the present study together with story completion items designed to tap mechanisms for coping with other critical stress situations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)