Automatic versus reflective social problem solving in relation to children's sociometric status.

Children's automatic and reflective social problem-solving skills were compared by requiring them to generate solutions to hypothetical social problems immediately after hearing them or after being required to wait 20 sec before answering. When responding immediately, a condition designed to evoke Ss' automatic response tendencies, both aggressive and nonaggressive, rejected boys generated fewer verbal assertion responses and more conflict-escalating responses than did nonrejected boys. When required to delay before responding, a condition that encouraged reflective reasoning, only the responses of aggressive rejected boys differed from those of nonrejected boys. Similar status-related differences in the solutions proposed by female Ss were not found. The implications of these findings for aggressive and rejected children's social problem-solving deficiencies are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)