Subject(s)
Aggression , Child Behavior Disorders , Adolescent , Adult , Child , Child Abuse , Child Behavior Disorders/etiology , Female , Humans , Male , TelevisionSubject(s)
Child Development , Child Rearing , Parenting , Punishment , Child , Humans , Reinforcement, Psychology , Research , SocializationSubject(s)
Child Behavior , Punishment , Aggression , Child , Humans , Public Policy , Television , ViolenceABSTRACT
This study examined 3 factors that were hypothesized to increase risk for aggression among urban children: economic disadvantage, stressful events, and individual beliefs. Participants were 1,935 African American, Hispanic, and White elementary-school boys and girls assessed over a 2-year period. The relation between individual poverty and aggression was only significant for the White children, with significant interactions between individual and community poverty for the other 2 ethnic groups. With a linear structural model to predict aggression from the stress and beliefs variables, individual poverty predicted stress for African American children and predicted beliefs supporting aggression for Hispanic children. For all ethnic groups, both stress and beliefs contributed significantly to the synchronous prediction of aggression, and for the Hispanic children, the longitudinal predictions were also significant. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for preventive interventions in multiethnic, inner-city communities.
Subject(s)
Aggression , Life Change Events , Socioeconomic Factors , Urban Population , Black or African American/psychology , Child , Cross-Cultural Comparison , Female , Hispanic or Latino/psychology , Humans , Male , Prospective Studies , White People/psychologySubject(s)
Television , Violence , Adolescent , Adult , Age Factors , Aggression , Australia , Chicago , Child , Female , Follow-Up Studies , Humans , Interviews as Topic , Israel , Male , Poland , Research , Time Factors , United StatesSubject(s)
Psychology, Adolescent , Societies, Scientific , Violence , Adolescent , Humans , Risk Factors , United StatesSubject(s)
Aggression , Child Behavior , Child , Child Rearing , Female , Gender Identity , Humans , Male , Socialization , TelevisionABSTRACT
The present study examined family socioeconomic indicators, parent child-rearing variables, and childhood and adolescent behaviors, which were hypothesized to predict adult ego development. The subjects were 206 females and 192 males, ages 30-31, who began participating in a longitudinal study at age 8. At that time, interviews with their parents yielded data on family background variables and child-rearing practices. Peer-nominations and other testing procedures with the children yielded data on the children's cognitive and behavioral styles at ages 8 and 19. At age 30, the subjects completed the Loevinger Sentence Completion Test of Ego Development. Results confirmed the hypotheses that child-rearing styles characterized by acceptance, a nonauthoritarian approach to punishment, and identification of the child with the parent related to higher levels of adult ego development 22 years later. These relations obtained more strongly for females than for males. In addition, childhood and adolescent indicators of impulse control and cognitive development (nonaggression, prosocial behavior, and intelligence) were associated with higher levels of adult ego development. Finally, hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that the development of aggression was linked to adult ego level attainment in males, while the development of prosocial behavior was related to adult ego development in females.
Subject(s)
Ego , Personality Development , Adolescent , Adult , Aggression/psychology , Aspirations, Psychological , Child , Child Rearing , Female , Follow-Up Studies , Humans , Intelligence , Male , Social Behavior , Socioeconomic FactorsABSTRACT
In a 22-year study, data were collected on aggressiveness and intellectual functioning in more than 600 subjects, their parents, and their children. Both aggression and intellectual functioning are reasonably stable in a subject's lifetime and perpetuate themselves across generations and within marriage pairs. Aggression in childhood was shown to interfere with the development of intellectual functioning and to be predictive of poorer intellectual achievement as an adult. Early IQ was related to early subject aggression but did not predict changes in aggression after age 8. On the other hand, differences between early IQ and intellectual achievement in middle adulthood were predictable from early aggressive behavior. A dual-process model was offered to explain the relation between intellectual functioning and aggressive behavior. We hypothesized that low intelligence makes the learning of aggressive responses more likely at an early age, and this aggressive behavior makes continued intellectual development more difficult.
Subject(s)
Aggression/psychology , Intelligence , Achievement , Adult , Child , Female , Human Development , Humans , Longitudinal Studies , Male , Parents/psychology , Social ClassSubject(s)
Aggression , Behavior Therapy , Child Behavior Disorders/therapy , Adolescent , Behavior Therapy/methods , Child , Cognition , Combined Modality Therapy , Humans , Interpersonal Relations , Male , Play TherapyABSTRACT
A sample of 169 first- and third-grade children, selected because of their high exposure to television violence, was randomly divided into an experimental and a control group. Over the course of 2 years, the experimental subjects were exposed to two treatments designed to reduce the likelihood of their imitating the aggressive behaviors they observed on TV. The control group received comparable neutral treatments. By the end of the second year, the experimental subjects were rated as significantly less aggressive by their peers, and the relation between violence viewing and aggressiveness was diminished in the experimental group.
