Assessing youth's internal and external attributions to negative peer interactions and victimization—development of the Causal Attributions for Peer Experiences (CAPE) scale

Abstract

Many youth experience negative behavior from their peers, which can have lasting consequences for their social functioning and well-being. One mechanism through which negative interactions affect youth is causal attributions, that is, the interpretations that they make for why a negative interaction occurred. We present the newly developed CAPE (Causal Attributions for Peer Experiences) scale, which assesses youth's stable internal, unstable internal, stable external, and unstable external attributions for peers' mean behavior. Self-blame (characterological and behavioral) and hostile intent attributions were positively correlated, and although there is heterogeneity between individuals, latent profile analysis shows that subgroups moderate or high on all blaming attributions exist. Moreover, all types of attributions are related to youth's socio-emotional functioning, and youth with a profile of both strong self-blame and strong hostile intent attributions experience the most internalizing and externalizing problems, as well as victimization.