Provoked and unprovoked aggression in toddlerhood: Evaluating measurement invariance and latent means across gender, age, and time.

This paper re-examined the factor structure of a recently developed parent report of aggression, the Provoked and Unprovoked Aggression Questionnaire, and evaluated measurement invariance and latent mean differences across gender, age, and time. Participants were 333 mothers of toddlers (younger age group: n = 167, 53.9% boys, Mage Time 1 = 18.30 months, SD = 0.45; older age group: n = 166, 48.8% boys, Mage Time 1 = 24.29 months, SD = 0.38) who filled out provoked (eight items) and unprovoked (five items) aggression scales twice over a 3-month period. We found evidence for the configural, metric, and scalar measurement invariance-a requirement needed to make a meaningful comparison between aggression means across gender, age groups, and time. When comparing means for boys and girls, gender differences emerged earlier for unprovoked than provoked aggression. Also, the frequency of provoked aggression increased among younger, but not older, toddlers. By developing a brief parental report of aggression in toddlerhood, we hope to fill a void of early aggression measures that tap the contextual variability in aggressive behaviors, and thereby stimulate more research to further our understanding of different types of aggression and their correlates in toddlerhood.

Longitudinal associations between adolescents' narcissism and friendship features depend on gender and friends' narcissism.

Youth with greater levels of narcissism face a wide array of difficulties in interactions with others. However, there exists a curious lack of research on their close relationships, such as friendships. In this study, we examined associations between narcissism and friendship features over time. Participants were 261 eighth and ninth graders (112 boys; Mage at Time1 = 14.34, SD = .68; 95.4% born in Finland) who completed measures of narcissism at Time 1 (fall of the school year), and friendship nominations as well as three different characteristics of friendship (positive friendship quality, corumination, and conflict) at Time 1 and Time 2 (spring of the school year). When we limited our analyses to participants who were in stable reciprocated friendships, then, for girls, narcissism was negatively associated with Time 2 positive friendship quality as well as corumination. For boys, narcissism was not significantly associated with Time 2 positive friendship quality nor corumination. In addition, higher levels of narcissism predicted greater Time 2 positive friendship quality when the friend scored relatively low on narcissism. Our discussion focuses on the putative mechanisms that might account for differences in the dynamics of friendships of boys and girls with greater narcissistic traits, and why youth with greater narcissism levels might perceive their friendships as having more positive features when their friend is dissimilar. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Unravelling the Parent-Child Contexts in Which Corporal Punishment Predicts Increases vs. Decreases in Children's Aggression.

OBJECTIVE: This study tested whether the longitudinal effects of mothers' and fathers' corporal punishment on children's aggression would vary depending on the context of the parent-child relationship (gender of the parent-child dyad, other parenting practices). METHOD: Participants were 325 children (Mage = 7.44 years, SD = .50) and their parents from Estonia who participated in a longitudinal study. Both mothers and fathers filled out measures of parenting practices in Grade 1 (corporal punishment, warmth, behavioral and psychological control). Teachers rated children's aggressive behavior in Grade 1 and 3. RESULTS: We found that the effects of both mothers' and fathers' corporal punishment on changes in children's aggressive behavior were conditional. In contexts that were characterized by a lack of parental warmth or overuse of behavioral control, corporal punishment was associated with increases in aggression; in parent-child relationships with high levels of parental affection or low levels of behavioral control, it was unrelated to, or associated with, decreases in aggression. Some of these conditional effects were specific to the gender of the parent and the child. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that we should try to better understand the complexities of different parent-child relationships that magnify vs. minimize the negative consequences of corporal punishment.

Rumination Mediates the Longitudinal Associations Between Elementary-School Victimization and Adolescents' Internalizing Problems.

Identifying potential mechanisms responsible for victimized children's maladjustment over time is a crucial step in our efforts to alleviate negative consequences of victimization. In this study, we examined whether rumination would serve as a potential mediator of the prospective links between victimization in late childhood and symptoms of depression and anxiety in adolescence. The sample included 552 Finnish students (238 boys; Mage in third grade = 9.85 years, SD = .71) who participated in a longitudinal study. Participants filled out several measures where they were asked about the frequency of different forms of victimization (in third and fourth grade), how much they ruminated about their past victimization and whether it elicited sadness and anger (in seventh grade), and the degree to which they experienced depressive and anxiety symptoms (in third and seventh grade). We found that greater frequency of victimization in elementary school led to increases in symptoms of depression and anxiety through rumination. These findings suggest that at least some victimization-related negative consequences can be minimized if we are able to help young people to stop reliving their painful memories.

Validating a Measure of Friends' Responses to Self-Disclosure in Adolescent Obese and Public School Samples.

The goal of the current study was to validate a new measure of the friendship self-disclosure process that assesses the likelihood of disclosing a negative peer experience and expectations for friends' responses to disclosure (EFRD) of this experience. Participants for Study 1 were 572 adolescents (age M = 14.82; 53% female; 66% Caucasian) from a public school sample who completed the self-disclosure survey and a measures of depressive symptoms at one time point. Participants of Study 2 comprised 180 obese adolescents (age M = 12.78; 67% female; 58% African American) from an urban children's hospital. The obese sample completed the self-disclosure survey, as well as measures of friendship quality, peer victimization, and depressive symptoms at two time points, 6 months apart. For both studies, 3 dimensions of EFRD were examined: protection, blame, and negative responses. Each EFRD dimension was replicated across 2 samples, over time, and had good interitem reliability as well as convergent and discriminant validity. In Study 2, high rates of expected negativity (only for boys) and blame (for boys and girls) predicted increases in depressive symptoms. In addition, victimization led to increases in depression for obese adolescents who expected little in the way of protective responses from their friends. In contrast, changes in depression were not predictable from victimization for those who expected friends to use protective responses. EFRD are clearly important mechanisms in the self-disclosure process that may serve to protect against changes in adjustment in response to negative peer experiences, such as peer victimization.

Teachers' Promotion or Inhibition of Children's Aggression Depends on Peer-Group Characteristics.

Researchers have increasingly started to pay attention to how contextual factors, such as the classroom peer context and the quality of student-teacher interactions, influence children's aggressive behavior. This longitudinal study was designed to examine the degree to which benefits and costs of different teaching practices (child-centered and child-dominated) would be dependent on the initial peer-group composition (aggregate levels of aggression and victimization at the beginning of first grade). Teachers provided ratings of aggression and victimization (N = 523 first-grade students; M age at the beginning of first grade = 7.49 years, SD = 0.52). Information about different teaching practices was obtained via observations. Our results show that whereas child-centered practices are beneficial in high-victimization classrooms, child-dominated practices inhibit the development of aggression in low-victimization classroom contexts. Our findings highlight the importance of moving beyond main-effect models to studying how different contextual influences interact to promote, or inhibit, the development of aggression.

Anger and effortful control moderate aggressogenic thought-behaviour associations.

The effects of anger and effortful control on aggressogenic thought-behaviour associations were investigated among a total of 311 Finnish fifth and sixth graders (mean age = 11.9 years). Self-reported aggressive cognitions (i.e., normative- and self-efficacy beliefs about aggression) were expected to be associated with higher peer-reported aggressive behaviour. Teacher reported anger and effortful control were hypothesised, and found, to moderate the effects of aggressive cognitions on aggression, such that the effects were strongest for children who were high in anger and low in effortful control, as compared to other conditions. Furthermore, under the conditions of high anger and high effortful control, self-efficacy was negatively related to aggression. Thus, aggression is a result of a complex, hierarchically organised motivational system, being jointly influenced by aggressive cognitions, anger and effortful control. The findings support the importance of examining cognitive and emotional structures jointly when predicting children's aggressive behaviour.

Classroom norms of bullying alter the degree to which children defend in response to their affective empathy and power.

This study examined whether the degree to which bullying is normative in the classroom would moderate associations between intra- (cognitive and affective empathy, self-efficacy beliefs) and interpersonal (popularity) factors and defending behavior. Participants were 6,708 third- to fifth-grade children (49% boys; Mage = 11 years) from 383 classrooms. Multilevel modeling analyses revealed that children were more likely to defend in response to their affective empathy in classrooms with high levels of bullying. In addition, popular students were more likely to support victims in classrooms where bullying was associated with social costs. These findings highlight the importance of considering interactions among individual and contextual influences when trying to understand which factors facilitate versus inhibit children's inclinations to defend others.

Is popularity associated with aggression toward socially preferred or marginalized targets?

This study was designed to test whether aggression toward easy or challenging targets is more likely to be associated with popularity. More specifically, we tested two alternative hypotheses with a sample of 224 adolescents (12- and 13-year-olds): (a) whether aggression toward highly disliked peers is associated with popularity (the easy target hypothesis) or (b) whether aggression toward highly liked peers is associated with popularity (the challenging target hypothesis). Support was found only for the challenging target hypothesis. In particular, our results indicate that aggressiveness toward peers who are liked by many others has social benefits in the form of greater popularity (particularly for highly preferred adolescents) without social costs (i.e., is unrelated to social preference). In contrast, aggressiveness toward peers who are disliked by many others is associated with lower social preference but bears no association with popularity. These results highlight the importance of studying contextualized aggression in order to understand the conditions under which aggression is most, and least, likely to be associated with social power and dominance.

Forgiveness and its determinants depending on the interpersonal context of hurt.

Children and adolescents encounter different hurtful experiences in school settings. How these events are processed (e.g., whether they think that the transgressor was hostile) is likely to depend on the relationship with the transgressor. In this study, we examined how adolescents (58 girls and 35 boys, mean age=14.03 years, SD=0.60) dealt with the hurt caused by someone they liked or disliked. Our findings show that the hurt caused by a disliked transgressor is likely to lead to more negative cognitive (e.g., hostile attributions), affective (e.g., feelings of anger), and motivational (e.g., avoidance/revenge) outcomes than the hurt caused by a liked peer. In addition, we found that associations between cognitive processes and avoidance/revenge were mediated by feelings of anger, but only when the transgression occurred in the context of disliking. These results highlight the importance of studying how adolescents process hurtful experiences in different relational contexts.

Relationship specificity of aggressogenic thought-behavior processes.

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine the relationship specificity of aggressogenic thought-behavior processes and to investigate the role of self-esteem in translating or inhibiting aggressogenic thought into aggression toward personally liked and disliked targets. Participants (186 Finnish boys and girls; 11-12 years old at Time 1) completed measures twice over a 1-year interval. We assessed children's attributions of hostility, relational goals, expectations of anger, and self-efficacy at Time 1 as well as aggression, at both time points, toward their previously identified liked and disliked peers. Our results mostly supported our hypothesis that cognitions guide behavior mainly within the relationship context. Moreover, high self-esteem potentiated cognition-behavior links toward children's own liked peer but inhibited the actualization of aggressogenic thought toward children's disliked peer. These findings highlight the importance of taking a Person × Situation approach when studying cognition-behavior processes.

Automatic activation of adolescents' peer-relational schemas: evidence from priming with facial identity.

This study provides experimental evidence for automatic, relationship-specific social information processing in 13-year-old adolescents. Photographs of participants' liked, disliked, and unknown peers were used as primes in an affective priming task with happy and angry facial expression probes and in a hypothetical vignette task. For the affective priming, reaction times were faster for congruent than for incongruent prime-probe pairs when the prime visibility was high and the prime-probe stimulus onset asynchrony was long. In the vignette task, participants attributed more hostility toward the protagonist, experienced more anger, and were more likely to retaliate when the disliked peer served as a prime. It is concluded that peer-relational schemas and related affect are activated automatically upon perception of a peer.

Affect-congruent social-cognitive evaluations and behaviors.

This study examined whether the affect children feel toward peers would influence children's social-cognitive evaluations and behaviors. The sample consisted of 209 fifth-grade children (11- to 12-year-olds; 119 boys and 90 girls). For each child, 3 target peers (liked, disliked, and neutral) were identified via a sociometric nomination procedure. The names of the targets were then inserted into hypothetical vignettes in which the target peer's behavior had a negative consequence for the child. After each vignette, questions about intent, outcome expectations, and self-efficacy beliefs were asked. In addition, self-reports regarding relationship-specific proactive and reactive aggression and regarding victimization were collected. The results demonstrate that children social-cognitively differentiate between the relationship types and that relationship-specific evaluations are associated with relationship-specific behaviors.

Hostile attributions and behavioral strategies in children: does relationship type matter?

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that children's hostile attributions and behavioral strategies in response to peer provocation and rebuff situations will depend on the relationship with the target peer (i.e., friend, enemy, neutral). The sample consisted of 144 fourth graders (75 boys and 69 girls; mean age=10.47 years, SD=0.55 years). The participants were randomly selected from a pool of 442 children who completed a measure of social adjustment in Grade 3. In Grade 4, children participated in the individual interviews in which they were verbally presented with 6 hypothetical situations. The target peers were identified on the basis of the relationship descriptions. The results clearly demonstrate that children do indeed differentiate between relationship types in regard to hostile attributions and hostile strategies, with more hostility attributed and more hostile responses proposed toward enemies than toward other peers (ps<.05). In addition, this relationship effect holds even when the social and behavioral reputation of the target peers is accounted for (ps<.05).

"I'm OK but you're not" and other peer-relational schemas: explaining individual differences in children's social goals.

This study examined the links among 5th and 6th graders' (279 girls and 310 boys) self- and peer perceptions, social goals, and social behavior. Social goals mediated the effects of self- and peer perceptions on 3 types of behavior: proactive aggression, prosocial behavior, and withdrawal. In addition to their main effects (self-perception predicting variance in agentic goals, peer perception being related to communal goals), self- and peer perception interacted in influencing social goals; for instance, the effects of a positive view of oneself were different in the contexts of a positive versus a negative perception of peers. It is suggested that in order to predict children's social behavior more accurately, researchers should investigate children's dual perceptions of themselves and of their peers--that is, their peer-relational schemas--instead of assessing self-perception and peer perception in isolation from each other.