The relation between social rejection and growth in antisocial behavior was investigated. In Study 1,259 boys and girls (34% African American) were followed from Grades 1 to 3 (ages 6-8 years) to Grades 5 to 7 (ages 10-12 years). Early peer rejection predicted growth in aggression. In Study 2,585 boys and girls (16% African American) were followed from kindergarten to Grade 3 (ages 5-8 years), and findings were replicated. Furthermore, early aggression moderated the effect of rejection, such that rejection exacerbated antisocial development only among children initially disposed toward aggression. In Study 3, social information-processing patterns measured in Study 1 were found to mediate partially the effect of early rejection on later aggression. In Study 4, processing patterns measured in Study 2 replicated the mediation effect. Findings are integrated into a recursive model of antisocial development.
Several scholars have highlighted the importance of examining moral disengagement (MD) in understanding aggression and deviant conduct across different contexts. The present study investigates the role of MD as a specific social-cognitive construct that, in the organizational context, may intervene in the process leading from stressors to counterproductive work behavior (CWB). Assuming the theoretical framework of the stressor-emotion model of CWB, we hypothesized that MD mediates, at least partially, the relation between negative emotions in reaction to perceived stressors and CWB by promoting or justifying aggressive responses to frustrating situations or events. In a sample of 1,147 Italian workers, we tested a structural equations model. The results support our hypothesis: the more workers experienced negative emotions in response to stressors, the more they morally disengaged and, in turn, enacted CWB.
Considerable scientific and intervention attention has been paid to judgment and decision-making systems associated with aggressive behavior in youth. However, most empirical studies have investigated social-cognitive correlates of stable child and adolescent aggressiveness, and less is known about real-time decision making to engage in aggressive behavior. A model of real-time decision making must incorporate both impulsive actions and rational thought. The present paper advances a process model (response evaluation and decision; RED) of real-time behavioral judgments and decision making in aggressive youths with mathematic representations that may be used to quantify response strength. These components are a heuristic to describe decision making, though it is doubtful that individuals always mentally complete these steps. RED represents an organization of social-cognitive operations believed to be active during the response decision step of social information processing. The model posits that RED processes can be circumvented through impulsive responding. This article provides a description and integration of thoughtful, rational decision making and nonrational impulsivity in aggressive behavioral interactions.
This study examines the role of moral disengagement in fostering engagement in aggression and violence through adolescence to young adulthood in accordance with a design in which the study of individual differences and of their relations is instrumental to address underlying intraindividual structures and process conducive to detrimental conduct. Participants were 345 young adults (52% females) who were followed across 4 time periods (T1 M age = 17 years to T4 M age = 25 years). The longitudinal relations among irritability, hostile rumination, and moral disengagement attest to a conceptual model in which moral disengagement is crucial in giving access to action to aggressive tendencies. Findings suggest that irritability and hostile rumination contributed to the development of each other reciprocally and significantly across time. While hostile rumination and moral disengagement significantly mediated the relation between irritability and violence, moral disengagement significantly mediated the relation between hostile rumination and violence.
Externalizing behavior problems of 124 adolescents were assessed across Grades 7-11. In Grade 9, participants were also assessed across social-cognitive domains after imagining themselves as the object of provocations portrayed in six videotaped vignettes. Participants responded to vignette-based questions representing multiple processes of the response decision step of social information processing. Phase 1 of our investigation supported a two-factor model of the response evaluation process of response decision (response valuation and outcome expectancy). Phase 2 showed significant relations between the set of these response decision processes, as well as response selection, measured in Grade 9 and (a) externalizing behavior in Grade 9 and (b) externalizing behavior in Grades 10-11, even after controlling externalizing behavior in Grades 7-8. These findings suggest that on-line behavioral judgments about aggression play a crucial role in the maintenance and growth of aggressive response tendencies in adolescence.Inquiry in social-cognitive psychology (e.g., the association between cognitive processing and maladaptive social development.
Behavioral scientists have distinguished an instrumental (or proactive) style of aggression from a style that is reactive (or hostile). Whereas instrumental aggression is cold-blooded, deliberate, and goal driven, reactive aggression is characterized by hot blood, impulsivity, and uncontrollable rage. Scholars have pointed to the distinction between murder (committed with malice aforethought) and manslaughter (enacted in the heat of passion in response to provocation) in criminal law as a reflection of the instrumental-reactive aggression dichotomy. Recently, B. J. Bushman and C. A. Anderson (2001) argued that the instrumental-reactive aggression distinction has outlived its usefulness in psychology and pointed to inconsistencies and confusion in criminal law applications as support for their position. But how similar is the legal distinction between murder and manslaughter to the instrumental-reactive aggression dichotomy in psychology? This article compares and contrasts the psychological and legal models and demonstrates that the purposes for distinguishing between instrumental and reactive aggression in psychology and law are undeniably different in meaningful ways. As such, a perceived shift in law away from differentiating murder and manslaughter has no bearing on the usefulness of the instrumental-reactive aggression distinction in psychological science.
This study examined the mediating role of loneliness (assessed by self-report at Time 2; Grade 6) in the relation between early social preference (assessed by peer report at Time 1; kindergarten through Grade 3) and adolescent anxious/depressed symptoms (assessed by mother, teacher, and self-reports at Time 3; Grades 7-9). Five hundred eighty-five boys and girls (48% female; 16% African American) from three geographic sites of the Child Development Project were followed from kindergarten through Grade 9. Loneliness partially mediated and uniquely incremented the significant effect of low social preference in childhood on anxious/depressed symptoms in adolescence, controlling for early anxious/depressed symptoms at Time 1. Findings are critical to understanding the psychological functioning through which early social experiences affect youths' maladjusted development. Directions for basic and intervention research are discussed, and implications for treatment are addressed.It is well established that children who have problems with their early peer relations are more likely to experience maladjustment in later life (Hymel, Rubin, Rowden, & LeMare, 1990;Kaplow, Fontaine, Burks, & Dodge, 2000;Parker & Asher, 1987). This effect appears to be particularly true for children who are chronically rejected by their peers (e.g., Boivin, Poulin, & Vitaro, 1994;Burks, Dodge, & Price, 1995;Coie, Lochman, Terry, & Hyman, 1992;Dodge et al., 2003;Kupersmidt, Burchinal, & Patterson, 1995; see Parker & Asher, 1987, for a review). Recently, there has been growing scientific interest in the psychological functioning through which peer-relation problems and early social experiences may affect the development of later internalizing difficulties, including symptoms of depression and anxiety (e.g., Boivin, Hymel, & Bukowski, 1995;Burks et al., 1995; also see Cicchetti, Rogosch, & Toth, 1994Cicchetti & Toth, 1998).One possible psychological mechanism is loneliness. The relation between early peer rejection and loneliness has been well established. As Asher, Parkhurst, Hymel, and Williams (1990, pp. 253-254) have asserted, "… there is good reason to expect that rejected children are dissatisfied with their peer relationships" and " [t]here is evidence that peer relationships matter to rejected children; indeed, they claim to place as much importance on peer relationships as do other children." It is no wonder, then, why children who are socially rejected or less preferred experience greater loneliness than do their nonrejected and socially preferred peers ; they lack (and may even be unable to attain) peer relationships to which they can attribute significant value.This problem may be exacerbated as children enter adolescence and the importance of relationships with one's peers becomes even more important (Engels, Dekovic, & Meeus, 2002; also, see Claes, 1992). During the transition from childhood to adolescence, youths focus more on peer relationships and less on relationships with adults, caregivers, and authority figures. Frie...
This study examined the bidirectional development of aggressive response evaluation and decision (RED) and antisocial behavior across five time points in adolescence. Participants (n = 522) were asked to imagine themselves behaving aggressively while viewing videotaped ambiguous provocations and answered a set of RED questions following each aggressive retaliation (administered at Grades 8 and 11 [13 and 16 years, respectively]). Self- and mother reports of antisocial behavior were collected at Grades 7, 9/10, and 12 (12, 14/15, and 17 years, respectively). Using structural equation modeling, the study found a partial mediating effect at each hypothesized mediational path despite high stability of antisocial behavior across adolescence. Findings are consistent with an individual systems perspective by which adolescents' antisocial conduct influences how they evaluate aggressive interpersonal behaviors, which affects their future antisocial conduct.
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