L18 - Aggression and Antisocial Behaviour

Question 1

Define aggression:

Answer 1

Intentional behaviour aimed at hurting others

Question 2

What is instrumental aggression?

Answer 2

Aimed at achieving a goal - physical aggression

Question 3

What is relational aggression?

Answer 3

Aimed at harming others’ interpersonal relationships

Question 4

What is Antisocial behaviour?

Answer 4

Behaviour which violates rules or conventions of society

Question 5

What are conduct problems?

Answer 5

Generic term to cover these types of behaviour

Question 6

Are antisocial and prosocial behaviours direct opposites?

Answer 6

• Traditionally thought of as opposite poles of the same thing
• Correlated but distinct: diff developmental patterns and predictors and outcomes

Question 7

What was a study looking at early aggression?

Answer 7

• Sharing tasks had the highest outcome in 18mo, but some aggression was seen in tugging/bodily force (low frequency)
• No gender differences at 18mo

Question 8

What were the patterns of aggression with age?

Answer 8

• Aggressive behaviour starts early, seen at 18mo
• 18mo - 3yo = increase in physical aggression
• 3yo - childhood = physical aggression decreases
• Relational aggression increases from toddlerhood to childhood
• Antisocial behaviour increases into adolescence, peaking at 17-18yo

Question 9

What is the continuity of aggressive behaviours? (Physical aggression)

Answer 9

• Physical aggression seen in most typically developing toddlers
• Small group of children continue to show physically aggressive behaviour throughout childhood
• Rates of aggression in childhood predict later antisocial behaviour

Question 10

What was Moffit’s theory?

Answer 10

• People strat early on to have aggressive behaviours, and then have these behaviours for the rest of their lifetime (life course persistent)
• OR normative behaviour (adolescence limited)

Question 11

What are gender differences in aggression?

Answer 11

• Males more likely to be aggressive than females
• Difference develops from toddlerhood, increases into childhood and adolescence
• Direct (instrumental) vs indirect (relationality) aggression

Question 12

What are the importance of genetic factors?

Answer 12

• 40% of risk factors for aggression is due to genetics
• Seen within adoption studies - compare adopted parents (env) from bio parents and check their child’s criminality
• Found that when env is criminal and bio is fine = criminality = 7%
• But when bio and not env = 12%
• Both bio and env = 40% criminality

Question 13

What are early and prenatal risk factors?

Answer 13

• Maternal age: younger parents = child aggression
• Parental antisocial behaviour
• Maternal Stress: Associations between maternal stress during pregnancy and child aggression, Plausible bio pathways and post-natal stress

Question 14

What was a study looking at prenatal depression and antisocial behaviour?

Answer 14

Depressed mothers in pregnancy are more likely to be violent teenagers

Question 15

What are individual factors?

Answer 15

• Temperament: Difficult temperament in infancy = later aggression/delinquency
• Aggressive behaviour in young children can also elicit poorer interactions and additional risk factor

Question 16

What do emotional recognitions do for aggression?

Answer 16

• Poorer emotion recognition in those who engage and aggressive and anti-social behaviour
• Difficulty identifying negative emotions
• Lack of emotion recognition associated with reduced empathy

Question 17

Are aggressive children less able to identify negative emotions?

Answer 17

• Influences later behaviour from early on
• Longitudinal study of 127 children, @3yo emotion identification and ToM tasks
• One year later, teacher rated aggression, aggression associated with poorer knowledge of emotions

Question 18

What is the link between social cognition and aggression? (Study)

Answer 18

• Aggressive children see more hostile intent in social situations
• Differences in attribution: 90 primary aged boys split into aggressive and non-aggressive
• Children told stories with ambiguous intent
• Aggressive children - more likely to interpret it as hostile

Question 19

What are self-fulfilling prophecies?

Answer 19

• Reacting to perceived hostile intent leads to aggressive behaviour, reinforcing attribution
• Aggressive children assumed to be more aggressive

Question 20

Role of parenting in aggression?

Answer 20

• Authoritarian, permissive and rejecting-neglecting parenting are all associated with child adjustment problems, including aggression
• Poor parental monitoring, inconsistent parenting = child aggression
• Punitive parenting/physical punishment associated with child aggression
• Direction of effects - children who are difficult to parent associated with poorer child-parent relationship
• Parental conflict also associated with child aggression

Question 21

What is the link between violent media and aggression?

Answer 21

• Viewing aggressions = situational aggression
• Review and meta-analysis: emotive issues with mixed findings - small effects overall
• Controlling for earlier aggression
• Generalisability for experimental measures of aggression
• Identifying and controlling for confounding variables
• Selective interpretation of findings and studies in reviews and publication bias

Question 22

What are peer influences on aggression?

Answer 22

• Peer groups can influence aggression
• Concurrent associations - previous exposure to deviant peers predicted delinquent activity

Question 23

What was a study looking at peer influences in the classroom?

Answer 23

• Looked at kids at 14 and 16 and they self-reported antisocial behaviour
• Those who were more aggressive at 14 were more aggressive at 16
• The more antisocial the class was, the more antisocial you became = greater effect on those who were less antisocial to begin with (less deviant)

Question 24

What was the study on peer rejection?

Answer 24

• Aggressive children are more likely to be rejected by peers
• 259 kids from 13 classes were followed from 5-8
• Rated how they liked each child in class and to pick 3 favourite and least favourite peers
• Teacher rated aggression scores
• Rejected children also more likely to be aggressive - bidirectional effects - study followed across 5 years

Question 25

What are societal factors in aggression? (Study)

Answer 25

- Observational comparison of children in two Central Mexican towns - Violent town = children are 2x as likely to engage in violent acts - Also seen the effect of neighbourhood on violence, controlling for indiv factors. Boys had higher levels of aggression than girls, esp when in a high violence neighbourhood. The girls showed similar patterns but the high violence neighbourhood condition for girls was still lower than the low violence neighbourhood in boys

Question 26

What was the effect of poverty and child psychopathology?

Answer 26

- Longitudinal study over 8 years - Opening of Casino, shared profits and raised 14% out of poverty - Rates of conduct problems reduced in ex-poor. No effect on persistently poor Supports idea that poverty results in child conduct problems and idea of intervention

Question 27

How are genes, prenatal experiences and postnatal env correlated?

Answer 27

- Mothers with a history of aggression are more likely to have children with antisocial men, become depressed in pregnancy, infants have difficult temperaments and show early signs of angry aggressiveness - Parents who may have their own difficulties with anger/aggression may be challenged by infants - Parents are more likely to model anger/aggression and have poorer parenting methods - More likely to live in more deprived neighbourhoods