Representation of Friendship and Aggressive Behavior in Primary School Children

Abstract

This study examines the representation of friendship during middle childhood and its impact on aggressive behavior. The literature shows that friendship is almost a “gym of social skills,” which, in turn, are protective factors against aggressive behavior; in this regard, the quality of friendship is especially important, but this quality becomes less and less accessible to direct observation as children grow older and spend most of their time in the externally regulated environment of primary school. To assess friendship quality requires allowing children to present their own perspective on the relationship, a goal that we have tackled through drawing. Children aged 6–11 years were individually asked to draw themselves and a close friend in two situations (i.e., relational wellbeing and relational distress) and to complete a 20-item scale of physical and verbal aggression. Data were analyzed with three main aims, namely, (1) to show if and how the representation of two core features of relationships (i.e., relatedness and individuality) changes according to the situation and/or according to the children’s gender; (2) to focus on the representation of distressing situations to verify if they coincide with forms of conflict and if they differ according to the children’s gender; and (3) to verify if the strength of indices of relatedness and individuality, both in situations of wellbeing and distress, predicts children’s tendency to enact aggressive behaviors. The results confirm that relatedness is the dominant feature of friendship, especially in the situation of wellbeing and when the situation becomes distressing. Conflict is not always present when children do not feel fine with their friends; boys and girls do not differ significantly in this regard, but they do differ in terms of the management of relatedness and individuality when problematic situations arise. In line with previous studies, sex is the main predictor of aggressive behavior with peers, with boys more at risk than girls; however, the capacity to relate with one’s own friend even in difficult times (in which boys are not inferior to girls) predicts lesser aggression with peers in general.

The student’s drawing of teacher’s pictorial Value as a predictor of the student–teacher relationship and school adjustment

“…Moreover, compared with the classic checklists provided for the scoring of projective tests (see a summary in Chandler, 2003 ), PAIR stands out because it contains analytical criteria to distinguish between intentional and random productions and to evaluate the communicative incidence of details as a function of the increasing complexity of drawings when children become more proficient in their pictorial activity. PAIR has been internationally published by its authors’ research group ( Bombi, 2002 ; Pinto and Bombi, 2008 ; Lecce et al, 2009 ; Laghi et al, 2013 ; Cannoni and Bombi, 2016 ; Di Norcia et al, 2022a ) as well as by other independent researchers ( Fraire et al, 2006 ; Misailidi et al, 2012 ; Rabaglietti et al, 2012 ; Sándor et al, 2012 ; Dimitrova, 2016 ; Guidotti et al, 2020 ).…”