ROUTLEDGE PSYCHOSOCIAL STRESS SERIES
Charles R. Figley, Ph.D., Series Editor

Understanding and Assessing Trauma in Children and Adolescents:
Measures, Methods, and Youth in Context by Kathleen O. Nader, Ph.D.

Aggression And Its Associations

Theoretical Perspectives

A number of theoretical perspectives have been applied to youths’ aggressive behaviors (Crick et al., 1998; Ford, 2002; Laird, Jordan, Dodge, Pettit, & Bates, 2001). These perspectives include social learning theory, coercion theory, cognitive conceptual framework, and victimization model among others. A belief that multiple pathways lead to aggression allows for the contributions of peer rejection, child traits, peer influence, and other aspects of youth and life.

Huesmann et al. (2003) have described several of the theories that attempt to explain the long-term relationship between exposure to violence (direct or via the media) and aggression. Among them are social-cognitive, desensitization, aggressive behavior stimulating exposure, third-variable, priming and arousal, excitation transfer, and general
arousal theories. Social-cognitive theory attributes the link between exposure to violence and aggression through the learning of schemas about a hostile world, aggressive scripts for social problem solving, and beliefs that aggression is acceptable. Desensitization theory suggests that, with repeated exposure to violence, the normal negative emotional response
(e.g., elevated heart rate, perspiration, discomfort) to observing violence, blood, and gore habituates and the observer becomes desensitized. This in turn may result in a flat response to planning or thinking about violence. Another theory is that aggressive behavior or its correlate stimulates exposure to violence and thus engenders the relationship between them.

The third-variable theory proposes that, because a wide variety of demographic, family, and personal characteristics (e.g., parenting factors, socio-economic status [SES]) have correlated with aggression and with specific other variables (e.g., trauma, violent TV watching), the long-term positive relations between aggression and any one of the other variables may be derived from their joint association with one or more of these “third variables.” Priming and arousal theories observe that stimuli previously paired with exposure to violence or items that inherently suggest violence (e.g., weapons) activate memory traces for aggressive scripts, schemas, and beliefs. These priming stimuli, coupled with a provoking situation, are more likely to result in aggression. Excitation transfer explains that, after an initial exposure to violence (via media or in person), a subsequent provocation may be perceived as more severe than it is because the emotional response to the previously observed/experienced violence is attributed to the later provocation. Alternatively, the general arousal theory suggests that arousal after observed or experienced violence may simply reach a peak that reduces any inhibiting mechanism’s (e.g., normative beliefs, previous self-control) ability to restrain aggression. These theories are not mutually exclusive (Huesmann et al.).

Researchers also have theorized a relationship between aggression and temperament or personality. Functionally similar to the mechanism in most social animals for controlling aggression, Blair, Jones, Clark, and Smith (1997) suggest the existence of a violence inhibition/control mechanism (VIM) in humans. Blair and his colleagues posit that the normally developing child’s VIM initiates a withdrawal response when activated by distress cues. Deficits in the VIM at an early age disrupt the normal developmental trajectory, resulting in failure of moral distinctions and the reduced suppression of anger. When coupled with cognitive impairments or a maladaptive social environment, VIM deficits may result in psychopathy. Rothbart and Bates (1998) note that specific dimensions of temperament are associated in differential manners with internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Although a continuity model (the persistence of behavior over time) might apply, they favor a vulnerability or predisposition model. That is, specific youth characteristics may make a child more vulnerable or prone to particular specific types of development.

Ford (2002) has described a preliminary model for conceptualizing the relationship between violent traumatization and conduct disturbances such as oppositional defiance and aggression. Recognizing that not all violent victimization leads to conduct or other disturbances, Ford postulates that, when it does, violent victimization is followed by dysregulation of both emotion and information processing followed by severe and persistent problems with OD and covert or overt aggression. Trauma symptoms such as information processing biases and impulsiveness then compound posttrauma reactions.

Youth, Environmental, and Experiential Characteristics

Aggressive behavioral development has been linked statistically to a number of factors in youths including genetic predispositions, social cognitions or information processing patterns, neighborhood quality (including ongoing war or inner-city violence), domestic conflict or family instability, propaganda, group regression, neurobiology, mental-health
problems, modeling and imitation of others’ behaviors, harsh physical experiences in early life, exposure to other violent traumas, watching violent television, coercive discipline, rejection by peers, chronic goal-blocking, unacknowledged shame leading to increased frustration and anger, early conflict-ridden or insecure attachments, high levels of specific narcissistic traits combined with low self-esteem, early physical aggression, failure to succeed in school, relations with deviant peers, and specific temperament traits (Aber, Brown, & Jones, 2003; Barry, Frick, & Killain, 2003; Chamberlain & Moore, 2002; de Castro et al., 2003; Dodge et al., 1995; Klain, 1998; Laird et al., 2001; Rutter, 2003; Scheff, 1997; Volkan, 2001). In addition to the specific youth characteristics, histories, and experiences that have been associated with aggression, cultural and countrywide conditions are as important as, if not more important than, individual differences. For example, the current crime rate in the United States is much higher than the rate in 1950 (Garbarino, 2002; Rutter). Some of these conditions and characteristics may lead to a number of vulnerabilities or symptoms.

Manifestations of aggression vary across age. For example, simple forms of aggression peak in early childhood, major conduct disturbances tend to appear at a later age, and major crime peaks later still (Rutter, 2003). Aber et al. (2003) found that a general shift in children approximately between the ages of 8 and 9 included self-reported increasing levels of cognitive processing that placed youths at risk for future aggression and violence.

Research has distinguished between the profiles of early-childhood-onset (early emerging life course, persistent and stable trajectory) and adolescent-onset antisocial behavior (Laird et al., 2001). Early starters are at greater risk for a number of child and adult problems (e.g., maladjustment, criminal behavior) (Laird et al.; McBurnett, King, & Scarpa, 2003). Effectively examining the relationship of aggression to other variables requires
understanding differences in the types of aggression as well as its manifestations at various ages.

Types of Aggression

Study results on the magnitude of gender differences in aggression depend in part on the way aggression is defined (Chamberlain & Moore, 2002; Crick, 1995). Studies have identified a number of types of aggression including reactive or proactive, social, indirect, physical, relational, and verbal aggression (Crick et al., 1998; Table 3.1). There is some variation in the way that forms of aggression are defined. Recent studies have focused on two main categorizations of aggression (reactive or hostile and proactive or instrumental).

Reactive aggression is characterized by retaliatory or defensive responses to provocation or frustration (Crick & Dodge, 1996; Crick et al.). Proactive aggression is deliberate, goal-directed behavior governed by external reinforcements (e.g., obtaining a desired goal).

Crick and Dodge found that proactive aggressive children (ages 9 to 12) evaluated verbal and physical aggressive acts more positively than reactive aggressive or nonaggressive youths. They were more likely to endorse instrumental and self-enhancing goals than relationship-enhancing goals. Reactive aggressive youths (fifth and sixth graders), on the other hand, attributed hostile intent to peers (even when none was intended) more often than nonaggressive youths. They were less likely to give peers the benefit of the doubt.

Dodge, Bates, and Pettit (1990) found that hostile attributional biases predicted later aggressive acts. Using ambiguous situations and probe detection tasks with boys and girls ages 11 to 16, Schippell, Vasey, Cravens-Brown, and Bretveld (2003) found that reactive
aggression but not proactive aggression was associated with biased attention to ridicule, rejection, and failure cues. The bias was in the direction of suppression of these cues, however. The authors suggest that this suppression may insulate youths from recognizing information that would correct their erroneous interpretations, from becoming aware of the inappropriateness of their behaviors, and from altering their self-concepts.

Dodge and Coie (1987) and Dodge, Coie, Pettit, and Price (1990) subdivided proactive aggression into two categories (see also Schwartz, Dodge, & Coie, 1993). Instrumental aggression is aimed at a nonsocial outcome such as the acquisition of a position or an object. Bullying aggression aims to dominate or intimidate a peer. Schwartz et al. studied the transactional behaviors of victims and aggressors (see “Aggressor and Aggressee,” below).

The study of childhood aggression has focused primarily on overt aggression, which harms others through the threat of physical injury or through actual physical damage (e.g., pushing, hitting, kicking, or assault) (Crick, 1995). Recent studies have shown that a relationally oriented form of aggression is more characteristic of girls (Chamberlain & Moore, 2002;
Crick; Crick, Nelson, Morales, Cullerton-Sen, Casas, & Hickman, 2001; Greenwald, 2002b; Simmons, 2002). Relational aggression harms others through the threat of or actual damage to their peer relationships (e.g., exclusion, withdrawal of friendship or acceptance, gossip) (Crick; Crick et al., 2001). Both forms of aggression can be either reactive or proactive.

In most countries and at different age levels, overt aggression is more common for boys than for girls, and relational aggression is more common for girls than for boys (Chamberlain & Moore; Crick et al., 1998). Relationship aggression is more common for adolescent girls than for younger girls (Chamberlain & Moore). In ambiguous situations, both overtly aggressive and relationally aggressive youths more often attribute malicious intent to peers than nonaggressive youths (Crick; see “Information Processing,” below; chapter 14). Girls have been more distressed than boys by relational aggression (Crick; Crick et al., 2001).

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