In a study spanning 22 years, data were collected on the aggressiveness of over 600 subjects, their parents, and their children. Subjects who were the more aggressive 8-year-olds at the beginning of the study were discovered to be the more aggressive 30-year-olds at the end of the study. The stability of aggressive behavior was shown to be very similar to the stability of intellectual competence, especially for males. Early aggressiveness was predictive of later serious antisocial behavior, including criminal behavior, spouse abuse, traffic violations, and selfreported physical aggression. Furthermore, the stability of aggression across generations within a family when measured at comparable ages was even higher than the within individual stability across ages. It is concluded that, whatever its causes, aggression can be viewed as a persistent trait that may be influenced by situational variables but possesses substantial cross-situational constancy.Interpersonal aggression is a problem whose dimensions in terms of cost to life and property are obviously staggering. Decades of research into the root causes of aggression have yielded numerous models purporting to explain the ontogeny of different aspects of aggressive behavior. Yet, there is little sign that the responses of either the criminal justice or psychological establishments based on these theories have had much impact. It now seems clear that a major reason for such failures is that aggression is a relatively stable, self-perpetuating behavior that is not readily amenable to change by the time it usually comes to the attention of society.Aggression as a characteristic way of solving

Although the relation between TV-violence viewing and aggression in childhood has been clearly demonstrated, only a few studies have examined this relation from childhood to adulthood, and these studies of children growing up in the 1960s reported significant relations only for boys. The current study examines the longitudinal relations between TV-violence viewing at ages 6 to 10 and adult aggressive behavior about 15 years later for a sample growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. Follow-up archival data (N = 450) and interview data (N = 329) reveal that childhood exposure to media violence predicts young adult aggressive behavior for both males and females. Identification with aggressive TV characters and perceived realism of TV violence also predict later aggression. These relations persist even when the effects of socioeconomic status, intellectual ability, and a variety of parenting factors are controlled.

We report a study aimed at understanding the effects of classroom normative influences on individual aggressive behavior, using samples of 614 and 427 urban elementary school children. Participants were assessed with measures of aggressive behavior and normative beliefs about aggression. We tested hypotheses related to the effects of personal normative beliefs, descriptive classroom norms (the central tendency of classmates' aggressive behavior), injunctive classroom normative beliefs (classmates' beliefs about the acceptability of aggression), and norm salience (student and teacher sanctions against aggression) on longitudinal changes in aggressive behavior and beliefs. injunctive norms affected individual normative beliefs and aggression, but descriptive norms had no effect on either. In classrooms where students and teachers made norms against aggression salient, aggressive behavior diminished over time. Implications for classroom behavior management and further research are discussed.

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.

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Samples of 758 children in the United States and 220 children in Finland were interviewed and tested in each of 3 years in an overlapping longitudinal design covering Grades 1 to 5. For girls in the United States and boys in both countries, TV violence viewing was significantly related to concurrent aggression and significantly predicted future changes in aggression. The strength of the relation depended as much on the frequency with which violence was viewed as on the extent of the violence. For boys the effect was exacerbated by the degree to which the boy identified with TV characters. Path analyses suggested a bidirectional causal effect in which violence viewing engenders aggression, and aggression engenders violence viewing. No evidence was found that those children predisposed to aggression or those with aggressive parents are affected more by TV violence. However, a number of other variables were found to be correlates of aggression and violence viewing. The most plausible model to explain these findings seems to be a multiprocess model in which violence viewing and aggression affect each other and, in turn, are stimulated by related variables. Observational learning undoubtedly plays a role, but its role may be no more important than the attitude changes that TV violence produces, the justification for aggressive behavior that TV violence provides, or the cues for aggressive problem solving that it furnishes.

Level of aggression at age eight is the best predictor of criminal events over the next 22 years. A clear implication is that the risk for criminality is affected by much that happens to a boy before he is eight years old. Preventive interventions need to target risk factors that appear to influence the development of early aggression.

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