Physical and relational aggression as predictors of children's friendship experiences: Examining the moderating role of preference norms

Abstract

Aggressive behavior is generally detrimental to children's friendships, both in terms of having friends and in terms of keeping friends. Despite this general tendency, many aggressive children have friends and some of these friendships are stable. We examined the moderating role of preference norms in the classroom and child's sex in the association between children's physical and relational aggression and their friendship experiences. A total of 1135 children (M = 10.24 years, SD = 1.01) in Grades 4 to 6 completed a peer nomination inventory in the Fall (T1) and Spring (T2) of the same school year. Norms were operationalized as the class‐ and sex‐specific correlation between physical or relational aggression and social preference. Norms moderated associations between each form of aggression and number of friends. At T1, physical and relational aggression were concurrently associated with having more friends when norms favored this behavior and with fewer friends when norms were unfavorable. The latter effect was especially pronounced in girls. Over time, youth lost friends when norms favored physical aggression and gained friends when norms favored relational aggression. T1 friends' physical and relational aggression were strong predictors of new friends' aggressive behavior, suggesting that friends provide a type of norm more significant to new friend selection than norms of the peer group and individual aggressive behavior. Overall, our results suggest that physical and relational aggression are not necessarily detrimental to children's friendship experiences and may even be beneficial in specific social contexts.