A Meta-Analysis of the Distinction between Reactive and Proactive Aggression in Children and Adolescents

Abstract

The present meta-analytic review aimed to clarify divergent findings concerning the relation between reactive and proactive aggression in children and adolescents. Fifty-one studies with 17,965 participants were included in the analysis. A significant correlation between reactive and proactive aggression was found. The strength of this relation varied considerably between studies, from −.10 to .89. Observational assessment and tilt/noise tasks were associated with smaller correlations than questionnaires. Within the large group of questionnaire studies, studies disentangling the form and function of aggression found lower correlations than studies that did not disentangle form and function. Among questionnaire studies, higher reliability was associated with larger correlations. Effect size did not depend on other study characteristics such as sample type, age, and informant type. It is concluded that reactive and proactive aggression are most clearly distinguished with behavioral observations and questionnaires that unravel form and functions of aggression.Keywords Meta-analysis . Reactive aggression . Proactive aggression . Aggressive behavior . Subtypes of aggressive behavior Many recent studies of children's aggressive behavior distinguish between reactive and proactive aggression. Dodge (1991) defined reactive aggression as a reaction to a presumed threat which is associated with anger, and proactive aggression as planned, instrumental and "cold-blooded" be-

Psychological processes in young bullies versus bully‐victims

“…Second, most psychological processes were positively correlated to the bully or victim nomination scores—with the exception of happy victimizer emotions, which was related to neither. Third, the correlation between reactive and proactive motives was lower than typically reported in questionnaire studies (i.e., r = .43, compared to r  =.70 as found in a meta‐analysis; Polman et al, 2007). This relatively low correlation enabled us to study distinct motives in bully and bully‐victim groups, beyond these children's shared tendency to aggress.…”

“…As a result, children's motives could have been confounded with their actual aggressive behavior: respondents may have given high ratings to children who frequently hurt others, even though these children did not have the motive to dominate. Illustrative of this confound, such questionnaires typically yield high relations between reactive and proactive motives ( r =  .70 as found in a meta‐analysis; Polman, de Castro, Koops, van Boxtel, & Merk, 2007). To address this issue, the present study used a questionnaire that assesses children's motives independently of their actual aggressive behavior (Polman, de Castro, Thomaes, & van Aken, 2009).…”

New Directions in Measuring Reactive and Proactive Aggression: Validation of a Teacher Questionnaire

“…Structural equation analyses found higher-order (pure) reactive and (pure) proactive components that were not significantly related. A metaanalysis confirmed that much lower correlations between reactive and proactive aggression are found with measures that separate form and function such as the Little et al (2003b) measure (Polman et al 2007).…”

“…Researchers have suggested that the high correlation between reactive and proactive aggression is due to two methodological problems of the measures being used and is thus not necessarily indicative of a lack of discriminant validity (Card and Little 2006;Little et al 2003a,b;Polman et al 2007;Polman et al 2008, submitted for publication).…”

“…The key concern seems to be the high correlation between reactive and proactive aggression. A recent meta-analysis found a mean correlation of 0.70 between these constructs (Polman et al 2007). When two types of behaviors are related so strongly that the one type is always accompanied by the other and never present on its own, it can be doubted whether it is useful to distinguish between the two.…”