Adolescents’ Disclosure and Secrecy About Peer Behavior: Links with Cyber Aggression,Relational Aggression,and Overt Aggression

The current study examines links between parent–adolescent relationship characteristics, friendship risk, and adolescent aggressive behavior. Adolescents (N = 110; M age = 17.05 years) were surveyed about their aggressive behavior (including cyber, relational, and overt) and the extent to which they disclosed aspects about their social lives (online and offline) to their parents. Participants also reported on the extent to which they hid or concealed components of their online and offline social lives from their parents, and about their exposure to a risky friendship context. Results indicate that high amounts of adolescent secrecy coupled with either (1) cyber aggressive friends, or (2) high levels of unsupervised socializing, increases adolescents’ risk for cyber aggression. Interactions between the parenting and peer contexts were also found with regard to relationally aggressive behavior. Implications of these results are discussed in the context of the parent–adolescent relationship.     

“Ladettes,” Social Representations,and Aggression

The increasing share of arrests for violent offences by young women in Britain has prompted the media to brand such offenders as ladettes. Their behavior is argued to result from their adoption of laddish attitudes that in turn is derived from new, aggressive images of women in the media. These images explicitly portray female aggression as an instrumental act in contrast to the traditionally expressive stereotype of female aggression. We examine the relationship, in an undergraduate sample, among laddishness (here operationalized as attitudes that support the acceptability of traditionally working-class youthful male social behavior by young women), instrumental and expressive social representations of aggression, and self-reported aggression. In both genders, measures of aggression are correlated with holding a more instrumental representation of aggression. For young women, there is no relationship between laddish attitudes and either aggression or social representations. For young men, approval of laddish behavior by women is negatively associated with an instrumental view of aggression that is positively correlated with three measures of aggression.     

Children’s Attitudes toward Aggression: Associations with Depression,Aggression, and Perceived Maternal/Peer Responses to Anger

Little is known about factors that influence children’s attitudes toward aggression, despite evidence that these attitudes are influential in promoting violent behaviors. The purpose of the present research was to examine the relation of self, peer, and parent social factors to school-age children’s maladaptive attitudes toward aggression. Specifically, symptoms of depression, peer overt aggression behaviors, and perceptions of maternal and peer responses to anger were evaluated as important factors associated with the use of aggression. These factors were examined separately for boys and girls, as research has consistently documented gender differences in the form and use of aggression. Hierarchical regression models were computed separately for boys and girls in grades three through five (N?=?167), with child-reported depression, peer-nominated overt aggression, and child-reported maternal and best friend responses to anger examined as predictors of maladaptive attitudes toward aggression. For girls, depressive symptoms positively predicted maladaptive attitudes toward aggression. For boys, the extent of peer-reported overt aggression (positively) and child-reported supportive maternal responses to the child’s anger (negatively) predicted maladaptive attitudes toward aggression. The value of examining social factors that relate to attitudes toward aggression is discussed as well as consideration of gender differences in these relations. In addition, discussion includes how these results highlight important targets for interventions that may be especially relevant for school-age girls and boys.     

Video Games,Immersion, and Cognitive Aggression: Does the Controller Matter?

The influence of video game realism and controller naturalness on aggression was examined with an experiment that manipulated game realism and controller naturalness. Perceived controller naturalness increased perceptions of realism of the game and led to greater immersion. The more realistic game was perceived as such and led to greater immersion. Ultimately, greater immersion led to more cognitive aggression. Results are discussed in terms of a mental models approach and the process of model matching.     

Aggression,Psychopathology, and Intimate Partner Violence Perpetration: Does Gender Matter?

The majority of intimate partner violence (IPV) research explores partner violence without considering the influence of contextual and psychosocial factors, such as trait aggression, psychopathology, gender, and provocation. Disparities in the general aggression literature further underscore the need to develop a better understanding of contextual and psychosocial factors. The present study sampled 720 (male = 365, female = 355) college students who completed measures of IPV perpetration and victimization, trait aggression, and psychopathology. Participants then completed a learning task, during which half were randomly selected to be provoked. The interactive effects of condition, gender, and perpetrator status on mood and aggressive responding were explored. Results indicated that perpetrators of both genders had similar emotional responses to provocation, but behavioral responses to provocation varied. Results were discussed in terms of their implication for future research and batterer intervention.     

Aggression and Sociometric Status among Peers: Do Gender and Type of Aggression Matter?

The connections between the use of different types of aggression (direct physical, direct verbal, and indirect) and sociometric status among same-sex and opposite-sex peers were studied. The subjects were 209 ninth-grade adolescents. Although an adolescent's aggression in general was related to being rejected by peers, a different picture emerged when the shared variance between types of aggression was controlled: The partial correlations showed that when the level of direct (physical and verbal) aggression was kept constant, increases in indirect aggression did not explain variance in peer rejection scores. On the contrary, the use of indirect aggression contributed (especially among boys) to social acceptance by peers. The direct (physical and verbal) forms of aggression were unrelated to adolescents' social acceptance scores. No clear differences were detected between girls' and boys' acceptance or rejection of their aggressive peers, despite the finding that boys seemed to tolerate indirect aggression better than girls did.     

Does Parental Relational Aggression Interact with Parental Psychological Control in the Prediction of Youth Relational Aggression?

In a sample of 117 youth and their parents, the associations between parental relational aggression, psychological control, youth gender, and youth relational aggression were examined. Boys with parents high on relational aggression and psychological control reported more relational aggression than boys with parents high on relational aggression and low on psychological control. Girls with parents low on relational aggression and high on psychological control reported more relational aggression than girls with parents low on relational aggression and psychological control. Results indicate youth may learn to use relational aggression from their parents, and have implications for intervention with relationally aggressive youth.     

Are Female Action Heroes Risky Role Models? Character Identification, Idealization, and Viewer Aggression

Although research has shown that affinity for aggressive media characters is linked to greater aggressive tendencies, the increasingly prevalent female action hero has received little empirical scrutiny to date. The present study surveyed 85 undergraduate women in Michigan, United States to determine whether identification with and/or idealization (wishful identification) of a favorite female action hero was associated with aggressive tendencies. Results show that behavioral idealization of an action hero was linked to increased self-reported aggressive behaviors and feelings. Behavioral identification (perceived similarity), by contrast, was not significantly associated with behavioral or affective aggression and showed an inverse relationship with relational aggression. Findings highlight the potentially distinct psychological mechanisms and consequences for idealizing vs. identifying with a favorite female action character.     

Are You Looking at Me,or Am I? Anger,Aggression, Shame and Self-worth in Violent Individuals

Conclusions about the relationship between anger and violence have been drawn from research that largely uses non-clinically angry, non-violent participants. The present study assessed cognitive correlates of anger by comparing mentally disordered violent offenders (n = 22) and violent prisoners (n = 22) in their irrational beliefs, self-esteem, internalised shame, and the experience and expression of anger. Findings showed there to be no significant difference between the two groups on all of the scales used. Low self-worth, high shame and self-downing irrational beliefs were found across the whole population. Cluster analysis revealed two distinct clusters with anger as the main factor separating them. One cluster could be categorised as anger disordered and had significantly higher shame, lower self-worth and more self- and other-downing irrational beliefs than the second cluster where levels of unhealthy anger were lower. It was concluded that high levels of unhealthy anger may serve as an attempt to protect against shame and low self-worth.     

Self-Esteem, Narcissism, and Aggression: Does Violence Result From Low Self-Esteem or From Threatened Egotism?

A traditional view holds that low self-esteem causes aggression, but recent work has not confirmed this. Although aggressive people typically have high self-esteem, there are also many nonaggressive people with high self-esteem, and so newer constructs such as narcissism and unstable self-esteem are most effective at predicting aggression. The link between self-regard and aggression is best captured by the theory of threatened egotism, which depicts aggression as a means of defending a highly favorable view of self against someone who seeks to undermine or discredit that view.     

Everyday Victimization of Adolescent Girls by Boys: Sexual Harassment, Bullying or Aggression?

School-based sexual harassment of adolescent girls by boys appears commonplace, yet aggression and bullying studies rarely yield sexualized material. This qualitative Australian study with 72 14- to 15-year-olds and 7 teachers aimed to discover whether interviewer use of neutral language in gender-segregated focus groups and interviews would yield material indicating that the victimization of girls by boys is sexualized. Verbal and indirect victimization were reported to be everyday occurrences, and almost entirely sexual. Findings are discussed in the light of definitions of sexual harassment, bullying and aggression. It is concluded that the term “sexual bullying” appropriately captures the gendered power structure underlying these behaviors. As such, they need to be understood, and become visible, more broadly than in terms of individual pathology.     

Adolescents’ Social Reasoning About Relational Aggression

We examined early adolescents’ reasoning about relational aggression, and the links that their reasoning has to their own relationally aggressive behavior. Thinking about relational aggression was compared to thinking about physical aggression, conventional violations, and personal behavior. In individual interviews, adolescents (N = 103) rated the acceptability of relational aggression, physical aggression, conventional violations, and personal behavior, and justified their ratings. Results indicated that adolescents’ views about relational aggression are complex. Although gossip was viewed as very wrong (comparable to beliefs about physical aggression), exclusion was perceived to be somewhat acceptable (less wrong than conventional violations, but more wrong than personal behaviors). With regard to associations between beliefs about aggression and aggressive behavior, the results indicated that beliefs about gossip were associated with gossiping behavior, and that beliefs about physical aggression were associated with physically aggressive behavior. No links emerged between beliefs about exclusion and exclusionary behavior. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed within the frameworks of social domain theory and social information processing models of aggressive behavior.     

Women Behaving Badly: Gender and Aggression in a Military Town, 1653–1781

Magistrates records from the English town of Portsmouth show the towns women to have been exceptionally violent. Women accounted, on average, for just over 31% of all assaults on record for the years 1653 to 1781. We used a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to compare the fighting styles of men and women and to examine the extent to which these were gendered. Particular attention was paid to levels of violence between pairs of brawlers. The most common form of violence was male-on-male (2,666 cases), followed by female-on-female (1,690), male-on-female (1,675), and female-on-male (299). Of these pairings, female-on-male assaults were the most violent, as measured by the types of weapons used by the aggressors, and female-on-female pairings were the least violent.Funding was provided by grant 410-2000-0467 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The authors are profoundly grateful to the gracious and highly capable staff of Portsmouths Museums and Records Service, including, most notably, Michael Gunton, Diana Gregg, Donna Malcolmson, and Sarah Speller. Special thanks also go to the team of volunteers who transcribed the towns sessions papers, thus greatly facilitating our entry of the same into a database. They were, in alphabetical order, Kate Beatty, Barbara Gower, Ursula Heinrich, Pam Honeysett, George Hothersall, Marjorie Hothersall, Una Lowe, Betty Richardson, Marjorie Ripper, and Brenda Whorton. There was one other volunteer: an inmate at the Kingston Prison just outside Portsmouth. Back in Toronto, several more people assisted in entering the records into a database. They were, in alphabetical order, Joanne Cordingley, James Hewitson, Allyson Lunny, Yvonne Pelletier, and Victoria Vaag.     

Perinatal Factors, Parenting Behavior, and Reactive Aggression: Does Cortisol Reactivity Mediate this Developmental Risk Process?

Little is known about the mechanisms of action that link perinatal risk and the development of aggressive behavior. The aim of this study was to examine whether perinatal risk and parenting interacted to specifically predict reactive aggression, as opposed to general aggressive behavior, and to examine cortisol reactivity as a mediator of this developmental risk process. In a community sample of 99 elementary school-aged children, prenatal risk was measured by a count of minor physical anomalies (MPAs), reactive aggression was measured by laboratory observations of aggression in response to provocation, and general aggression was measured by parent report. Cortisol reactivity was not found to mediate the association between MPAs and reactive aggression or general aggression. However, MPAs were found to interact with parenting behaviors to predict reactive aggression and general aggression, as well as cortisol reactivity. Specifically, as the deficits in parenting increased, MPAs became more strongly and positively associated with reactive aggressive and general aggressive outcomes. Similarly, in cases of poor parenting behaviors, MPAs were positively associated with higher cortisol reactivity. Implications for theory and prevention are discussed.     

Bidirectional Links Between Teachers’ Disciplinary Practices,Students’ Peer Status,and Students’ Aggression in Kindergarten

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - This study examined bidirectional links between teachers’ disciplinary practices (punitive and educational), students’ peer status in...     

Trauma and Aggression in the DSM–5

Psychological trauma, stress, childhood abuse, neglect, and loss are mentioned as important features or risk factors for mental disorders in 15 out of 19 sections of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed. [DSM-5]). This means that, according to the DSM–5, trauma and stress are relevant themes throughout the mental health field, not solely an area of subspecialty. Despite the recognition of the widespread role of trauma and stress in the DSM–5, there are inconsistencies in the discussion of trauma, including its relationship to anger and aggression, that should be corrected in future editions of the manual.     

Trajectories of Italian Children’s Peer Rejection: Associations with Aggression,Prosocial Behavior,Physical Attractiveness,and Adolescent Adjustment

In the present study, the predictors and outcomes associated with the trajectories of peer rejection were examined in a longitudinal sample of Italian children (338 boys, 269 girls) ages 10 to 14 years. Follow-up assessments included 60% of the original sample at age 16–17. Low, medium, and high rejection trajectory groups were identified using growth mixture models. Consistent with previous studies, we found that (a) being less prosocial and more physically aggressive at age 10 was characteristic of those children with the high rejection trajectory; (b) being less attractive was related to higher peer rejection from age 10 to 14; and (c) boys with a high rejection trajectory showed high levels of delinquency and anxiety-depression and low levels of academic aspiration at age 16–17, whereas girls with a high rejection trajectory showed low levels of academic aspiration and social competence at age 16–17. Our findings indicate the detrimental consequences of peer rejection on children’s development and adjustment and shed light on the mechanisms that contribute to maintaining or worsening (e.g., being attractive, prosocial, and aggressive) a child’s negative status (e.g., being rejected) within his or her peer group over time.     

“I'm Sorry,Please Don't Hurt Me”: Effectiveness of Apologies on Aggression Control

ABSTRACT

The author attempted to replicate Ohbuchi, Kameda, and Agarie's (1989 Ohbuchi, K., Kameda, M and Agarie, N. 1989. Apology as aggression control: Its role in mediating appraisal of and response to harm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56: 219–227. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) study which found that giving an apology, with or without harm removal, reduced aggressive responses among a sample of Japanese college women. The author found similiar results with a U.S. sample of college women. The results provide evidence for cross-cultural similiarity in the effectiveness of apologies in reducing aggressive responses.