JO URNA L O F APPLIED DEVELO PMENTA L PSYC HO LO G Y 4, 263-275 (1983) Age and Solutions Gender Differences in to Hypothetical Social Problems* zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXW KENNETH H. RUBIN Universiv of Waterloo LINDA ROSE KRASNOR Brock Universit_v One hundre d and twenty p re sc ho o le rs and 77 kind e rg a rtne rs ind ivid ua lly we re a d m iniste re d a measure o f so c ia l p ro b le m - sa lving . This m e a sure c o nsiste d o f five sto rie s in whic h a p ro ta g o nist sought to acquire on abject from a same- or different- a g e o r sa m e - o r d iffe re nt- se x ta rg e t. A g e d iffe re nc e s in the numbers and types of stra te g ie s were few. However, kind e rg a rte ne n sho we d g re a te r fle xib ility in stra te g y se q ue nc ing . Pro so c ia l stra te g ie s we re m o re o fte n d ire c te d to o ld e r ta rg e ts; a g o nistic stra te g ie s we re m a re o fte n d ire c te d to yo ung e r ta rg e ts. G irls sug g e ste d m o re p ra so - c ia l stra te g ie s whe n g irls so ug ht a n o b je c t fro m b o y ta rg e ts. G ive n the re sults it is sug g e ste d tha t fle xib ility is so c ia l p ro b le m - so lving a nd a tte ntio n to ta rg e t c ha ra c te ris- tic s should be inc lude d in future soc ial proble m so lving tra ining pro g ra m s. During the past decade researchers have become increasingly interested in the development of social competence. Among those skills considered definitive of social competence is social problem-solving (SPS), or the ability to attain personal goals during social interaction. In general, researchers have assessed SPS skills by administering measures of hypothetical-reflective reasoning to children (see Krasnor & Rubin, 1981, for a review). The prevailing assumption has been that children’s SPS thinking skills are predictive of competent social behaviors (Spivack & Shure, 1974). Given this assumption, psychologists have conducted: (a) correla- tional studies in which measures of hypothetical-reflective SPS skills have been related with independent measures of social competence such as teacher ratings (e.g., Rubin & Clark, 1983), peer sociometric choices (e.g., Rubin and Daniels- Beimess, 1983) and behavioral observations of social behavior (e.g., Marsh, Sera- * This p ro je c t wa s funded by a grant to the first author from the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services. Thanks go to Judy Mickle, Anne Emptage, Lynette Friesen, and Nancy Carlisle for their help with the study. We are also grateful to the children who participated in this project. Reprint requests should be sent to Kenneth H. Rubin, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1. 263