What is aggression
Aggression is part of our make up as human beings → any behaviour that has an intent to harm
What are the 2 types of aggression
Hostile/ reactive aggression
Instrumental/ proactive aggression
How does aggression develop in preschool
- Preschoolers:
- verbal aggression replaces physical harm → usually instrumental
How does aggression develop in childhood
- Childhood
- more amicable settlements
- slight increase in hostile aggression
- condone retaliatory aggression (ex: fighting back is ok)
What is the sex differences in aggression
- Boys are more physically and verbally aggressive than girls
- Due to socialization according to gender occurs from birth
- Parents interact differently with their children
- Due to socialization according to gender occurs from birth
Parents engage in different types of quality time with kids
This is also evident in culture, we expect different behaviours from males and females
Explain proactive aggressors
Proactive aggressors
- aggressive behaviours reinforced - enhance self esteem through aggressive acts
Explain reactive aggressors
Reactive aggressors
- hostile aggression - they feel suspicious of others and retaliate with force - “They deserved it”
What are characteristics of chronic aggressors/ bullies
- Chronic aggressors = bullys
- 17% are bullied and 19% bully (6% do both)
- Boys more likely to bully and be bullied
- Boys are physically bullied; girls are relationally bullied (girls use relationships to bully)
- Most frequent in early adolescence (Grades 6-8) and equally common across geography
- Hard to tease apart bully from fighting at earlier age
- Bullies more likely to smoke, drink and be poor students
- Bullies often socialize with other aggressive peers → reinforce that behaviour
What are characteristics of passive victims
- Passive victims
- most are passive victims
- tend to be more socially withdrawn, physically unimposing, not well liked
- do not provoke aggression
What are characteristics of proactive victims
- Provocative victims
- rarer oppositional, restless
- display hostile attribution bias
- may be abused at home
What are characteristics of chronic victims
- Chronic victims
- routinely get bullied
- self attribution for abuse → believe it’s their fault (there’s something about me that makes them do it)
- tend to lack social support and social skills
- tend to also have behavioral problems: social anxiety, anxiety, depression, low self esteem
What are characteristics of relational aggressors
- Relational aggressors
- using relationships to harm others
- ex: spreading rumors, social exclusion
- Relational aggression gains and maintains popularity through aggression
- are often not recognized as bullies as behaviours are more subtle
- This helps them maintain popularity?
- using relationships to harm others
How does culture influence aggression
Implicit and explicit socialization of aggression:
Cultural influence: some cultures have milestones that are associated with aggression
How does socioeconomic state influence aggression
- Your family’s socioeconomic households can influence aggression
- tend to see a negative correlation between socioeconomic and aggression → the poorer = more aggressive
- such a relation stems from increased environmental stress in lower socioeconomic households
- parenting behaviors: less responsiveness, more agitated interactions, less patience…
- limited time at home ⇒ less monitoring (and correcting) of aggressive behaviours
- more divided attention
- tend to see a negative correlation between socioeconomic and aggression → the poorer = more aggressive
How does a weak relationship with 2 parents influence aggression
- Parents who have conflicts within relationship, influences children to be aggressive
- Conflict between parents = increases child’s distress = aggression
- parents tend to argue and then withdraw “in public” but reconcile in private → away from children
- really important to reconcile in public as a model of appropriate behaviour
How does a coercive home environment influence aggression
- Coercive home environment
- negative home environment: negativity, bickering, tension, etc
- interactions around stopping one member from annoying another one
- aggression reinforced by the other member stopping
How can you control aggression
- Controlling aggression:
- create a nonaggressive play environment → no competitive games, aggressive toys (gun toys, etc)
- stop reinforcing aggressive behaviour
- if kid reacts aggressively, don’t draw attention to each aggressive act
- only most extreme behaviour acknowledged → stops attention gather reinforcement
- time out technique
- allows for parasympathetic activation to set in → more cognitive reasoning ability: blood no go brain, blood go arms to punch = no good → take out of bad environment and put in stable place to calm down
How can you control aggression with cognitive coaching interventions
- Social cognitive coaching interventions
- emotional regulation
- identify rise in physiological arousal or emotionality
- teach breathing and relaxation techniques
- cognitive retraining (ex: recognition of ambiguous acts as ambiguous) → someone walking in hallway bump you, not to be mean, just cuz hallway is small
- empathy development
- modeling of empathetic reactions to other’s distress
- teach reasoning and empathic reasoning to allow for cognitive understanding of how aggressive acts are felt by others
- social skills training
- train them to negotiate, talk, etc
- emotional regulation
