Aggressive Behavior 

About: Aggressive Behavior is an academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Poison control & Aggression. It has an ISSN identifier of 0096-140X. Over the lifetime, 2220 publications have been published receiving 97412 citations.

Bullying as a group process: Participant roles and their relations to social status within the group

Abstract: Bullying was investigated as a group process, asocial phenomenon taking place in a school setting among 573 Finnish sixth-grade children (286 girls, 287 boys) aged 12-13 years. Different Participant Roles taken by individual children in the bullying process were examined and related to a) self-estimated behavior in bullying situations, b) social acceptance and social rejection, and c) belongingness to one of the five sociometric status groups (popular, rejected, neglected, controversial, and average). The Participant Roles assigned to the subjects were Victim, Bully, Reinforcer of the bully, Assistant of the bully, Defender of the victim, and Outsider. There were significant sex differences in the distribution of Participant Roles. Boys were more frequently in the roles of Bully, Reinforcer and Assistant, while the most frequent roles of the girls were those of Defender and Outsider. The subjects were moderately well aware of their Participant Roles, although they underestimated their participation in active bullying behavior and emphasized that they acted as Defenders and Outsiders. The sociometric status of the children was found to be connected to their Participant Roles..

Do Girls Manipulate and Boys Fight? Developmental Trends in Regard to Direct and Indirect Aggression

Abstract: Gender differences in regard to aggressive behaviour were investigated in a series of studies of schoolchildren of different age cohorts: 8-year-olds (N = 85), 11-year-olds (N = 167), and 15-year-olds (N = 127). Different types of aggressive behaviour were measured with peer nomination techniques, supported by self-ratings. The social structure of the peer groups were also studied. The results of the 11-year-old cohort were previously presented by Lagerspetz et al. [1988; Aggressive Behavior 14:403-4141, but they are compared here with the other age groups. The principal finding was that girls of the two older cohorts overall make greater use of indirect means of aggression, whereas boys tend to employ direct means. Previously, the main difference between the genders has been thought to be that boys use physical aggressive strategies, while girls prefer verbal ones. Our studies suggest that the differentiation between direct and indirect strategies of aggression presents a more exact picture. Indirect aggressive strategies were not yet fully developed among the 8-year-old girls, but they were already prominent among the 11-year-old girls. Aggressive behaviour was assessed overall by the children themselves to be the highest in this age group.

Prevalence estimation of school bullying with the Olweus Bully Victim Questionnaire

Abstract: :::::::::::::::: :::::::::::::::: : The key aim of the present research was to study the ‘‘functionality’’ of two global variables in the Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire and to examine the appropriateness of different cutoff points of these variables for prevalence estimation. Several empirical and conceptual analyses strongly attested to the functionality of the two selected variables in terms of construct validity and selected measurement properties. Similarly, a number of analyses indicated that (having been bullied/having bullied other students) ‘‘2 or 3 times a month’’ was a reasonable and useful lower-bound cutoff point. With this cutoff point, ‘‘involved’’ students, victims, and bullies differed very markedly and in clearly different ways from ‘‘non-involved’’ students in conceptually related variables. Prevalence estimates derived in this way can be conveniently obtained, have a reasonably well-defined meaning, can be easily understood by users, and can be reproduced unambiguously by different researchers/administrators and at different times. An important background for the article is the fact that several common methods, including peer nominations, are not well suited for prevalence estimation. Prevalence data for victims, bullies, and bully-victims are also presented. All data were derived from the New Bergen Project Against Bullying, comprising a sample of 5,171 students from 37 schools in the town community of Bergen, Norway. At the time of the data collection, the spring of 1997, the 2,544 girls and 2,627 boys were in grades 5 through 9, with modal ages of 11 through 15 years. Aggr. Behav. 29:239–268, 2003. r 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

The Reactive-Proactive Aggression Questionnaire: Differential Correlates of Reactive and Proactive Aggression in Adolescent Boys.

Abstract: This study reports the development of the Reactive–Proactive Aggression Questionnaire (RPQ), and the differential correlates of these two forms of aggression. Antisocial, psychosocial and personality measures were obtained at ages 7 and 16 years in schoolboys, while the RPQ was administered to 334 of the boys at age 16 years. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated a significant fit for a two-factor proactive–reactive model that replicated from one independent subsample to another. Proactive aggression was uniquely characterized at age 7 by initiation of fights, strong-arm tactics, delinquency, poor school motivation, poor peer relationships, single-parent status, psychosocial adversity, substance-abusing parents, and hyperactivity, and at age 16 by a psychopathic personality, blunted affect, delinquency, and serious violent offending. Reactive aggression was uniquely characterized at age 16 by impulsivity, hostility, social anxiety, lack of close friends, unusual perceptual experiences, and ideas of reference. Findings confirm and extend the differential correlates of proactive–reactive aggression, and demonstrate that this brief but reliable and valid self-report instrument can be used to assess proactive and reactive aggression in child and adolescent samples.

Is Indirect Aggression Typical of Females? Gender Differences in Aggressiveness in 11- to 12-Year-Old Children

Abstract: Gender differences regarding aggressive behaviour were investigated in 167 school children, 11 to 12 years of age, through peer-rating techniques supported by self-ratings and interviews. The social structure of the peer groups also was studied. The principal finding was that girls made greater use of indirect means of aggression, whereas the boys tended to employ direct means. Gender differences in verbal aggression were less pronounced. The social structure of peer groups was found to be tighter among girls, making it easier for them to exploit relationships and harm their victims by indirect manipulative aggression. Because indirect aggression has rarely been satisfactorily studied with tests of aggression, this finding may help to explain 1) the generally lower correlation found between peer-rated and self-rated aggression in girls than among boys (indirect means not being so readily recognized by the subject as a kind of aggression) and 2) the low stability of aggressiveness in girls often found in developmental studies.