This investigation examined the relation between developmental trajectories jointly estimated for social and physical aggression and adjustment problems at age 14. Teachers provided ratings of children's social and physical aggression in Grades 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 for a sample of 255 children (131 girls, 21% African American, 52% European American, 21% Mexican American). Participants, parents, and teachers completed measures of the adolescent's adjustment to assess internalizing symptoms, rule-breaking behaviors, and borderline and narcissistic personality features. Results showed that membership in a high and rising trajectory group predicted rulebreaking behaviors and borderline personality features. Membership in a high desister group predicted internalizing symptoms, rule-breaking behaviors, and borderline and narcissistic personality features. The findings suggest that although low levels of social and physical aggression may not bode poorly for adjustment, individuals engaging in high levels of social and physical aggression in middle childhood may be at greatest risk for adolescent psychopathology, whether they increase or desist in their aggression through early adolescence.Children and adolescents who frequently exclude others, manipulate friendships, and spread malicious gossip may suffer emotional problems because of the interpersonal stress they create in their own social worlds, negative consequences they may face from peers, and the lack of trust that likely results from undermining others covertly. Because social and physical aggression are highly correlated (Card, Stucky, Sawalani, & Little, 2008), youth who harm others by disrupting their relationships may also be at risk for some of the same negative outcomes as children who are physically aggressive: delinquency, substance abuse, internalizing disorders, and dropping out of school (for a review, see Dodge, Coie, & Lynam, 2006). This research investigated whether childhood trajectories jointly estimated for social and physical aggression predict adolescent internalizing problems, rule-breaking behaviors, and features of borderline and narcissistic personality disorders.Three overlapping constructs describe subtle forms of aggression that damage relationships: indirect aggression (Buss, 1961;Feshbach, 1969;Lagerspetz, Bjorkqvist, & Peltonen, 1988), social aggression (Cairns, Cairns, Neckerman, Ferguson, & Gariepy, 1989;Galen & Underwood, 1997), and relational aggression (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995). The conceptualization of social aggression differs from related constructs in that it includes nonverbal as well as verbal forms of social exclusion (Coyne, Archer, & Eslea, 2006; © Cambridge University Press 2011Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Marion K. Underwood, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, 800 West Campbell Road, GR 41, Richardson, TX 75080; undrwd@utdallas.edu..
NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptDev Psychopathol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2012 January 1.
NIH-PA Author M...