Individual differences in children's suggestibility: a review and synthesis

Abstract Over the last decade, there has been a significant growth in the study of individual differences factors predicting children's suggestibility. In this paper, we synthesize the results of 69 studies examining the relationship of demographic factors (socioeconomic status and gender), cognitive factors (intelligence, language, memory, theory of mind, executive functioning, behavioural ratings of distractibility, and creativity), and psycho‐social factors (social engagement, self concept/self‐efficacy, stress/emotional arousal/state anxiety, maternal attachment styles, parent‐child relationship, parenting styles, temperament, and mental health) and children's suggestibility. We found that for cognitive factors, language ability and creativity were fairly consistently related to suggestibility. The highest correlations for psycho‐social factors and suggestibility were obtained for measures of self‐concept/self‐efficacy, maternal attachment, and the parent‐child relationship. Implications for future research and mechanisms underlying children's suggestibility are discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.