CHILDREN’S RESPONSES
TO
IMAGINARY PEERS
LABELLED
AS
EMOTIONALLY DISTURBED’
DAVID
W.
NOVAK
Duke Utiiuersily Medical Center
A recurrent problem in working with emotionally disturbed children involves
reactions to them by their peer group. Often such children have difficulty in estab-
lishing satisfactory peer relationships, and failure in doing
so
can lead to a further
lowering of self-esteem. In general, children who behave “differently” seem to be
ostracized. Thus one component in the classroom management of disturbed childrcn
is
the feedback obtained from their classmates and how these reactions may affect
the disturbed child.
Another component which may have relevance is the extent to which a child
is labelled by significant others as a deviant.
If
a teacher says to the class, “Now,
we
all know Johnny has
a
problem We have to be nice to him and try to overlook
it
when he does something that upsets us,” what happens to Johnny’s peer rela-
tionships?
Do
the children react with increased tolerance and empathic concern
for Johnny’s feelings, or is such a label the “kiss
of death,”
so
to spcak?
Peers
may
be “nice” to Johnny when the teacher is watching, but ignore or ostracize him
on the playground.
It
may be, then, that children may tolerate a wide range of
“deviant” behavior but may be less tolerant of the same behavior when the behavior
is
associated with some type
of
mental illness label.
Several studies are relevant to the problem of reactions to deviant behavior.
Goertzen
(1959)
and Wiggins and Winder
(1961)
demonstrated that children
responded most negatively to aggressive, antisocial behavior and to social with-
drawal. These behaviors are often indicative of emotional disturbance. Novak
(1974)
showed that school-age children could clearly discriminate descriptions of
various kinds
of
abnormal behavior from more normal behavior, and
to
some extent
could make discriminations among the disturbed behaviors in terms of relative
social acceptability.
In none of these studies was the behavior labelled as deviant in the sensc of
being symptomatic of emotional disturbance. Numerous studies have suggestcd
that adults respond negatively to the mental illness label (Phillips,
1963
;
1964)
,
but there is no data regarding whether children respond in the same ways to the
label. Childrcn of school age do seem to understand words like “weird” and LLcrazyll
as
they apply to the behavior of others,
so
one might expcct some
of
the same types
of
reactions given by adults.
A third component in determining rcactions
to
others
is
the scx of the actor.
Certain behaviors may seem more
or
less “disturbed” when cxhibited by one sex
than by the other.
For
example, boys might not respond as strongly to aggrcssive
behavior in another boy as they might to similarly aggressivc behavior in
a
girl.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the relativc effects of behavior,
labelling and sex upon children’s acceptance
or
rejection of others cxhibiting
a
variety
of
behaviors.
As
notcd in Novak
(1974),
children may not necessarily
‘This
research
wm
carried
out
as
part.
of
Research
Cont.ract.
71A3
granted
by
the
North
Carolinit
Department
of
Mental Health.