Associations Between Effortful Control, Psychological Control and Proactive and Reactive Aggression

Abstract

The current study examined relations between effortful control (ones ability to focus and shift attention in an adaptive manner), psychological control (caregiver attempts to manipulate the child's internal world) and proactive and reactive aggression. Participants were 69 children (54% male) ranging from 9 to 12 years of age (M = 10.35, SD = 1.14) and their primary caregivers from a community-recruited sample. Results indicate that psychological control and effortful control interacted and contributed to proactive aggression. At high levels of effortful control psychological control was positively associated with proactive aggression, whereas at low levels of effortful control psychological control was unrelated to proactive aggression. In contrast, although both effortful control and psychological control were correlated with reactive aggression, only effortful control was uniquely negatively associated with reactive aggression. Implications for prevention and intervention are discussed.

Self-Regulation Deficits Explain the Link between Reactive Aggression and Internalizing and Externalizing Behavior Problems in Children

“…factors (e.g., parental psychological control), which previous studies suggest may enhance or attenuate the effects of self-regulation deficits on subtypes of aggression (e.g., Ellis et al, 2009;Rathert, Fite, Gaertner & Vitulano, 2011).While it appears that poorer behavioral regulation as Despite these limitations, the present study illustrates how self-regulation difficulties can account for internalizing and externalizing behaviors seen in reactively aggressive children.…”

“…Metacognition comprises initiation (independent generation of appropriate responses and strategies), working memory (ability to hold information in mind and work with it), planning and organization (anticipating and managing current and future-oriented task demands and organizing information), organization of materials (ability to organize work and play spaces and keep track of possessions), and monitoring (work-checking and tracking the effect of one's work and impact of one's behavior on others; Gioia et al, 2000). These two broad indices were examined in the present study, given prior research suggesting that both behavioral regulation and metacognition may play a role in the emotion modulation difficulties seen in reactive aggression (Deater-Deckard et al, 2010;Self-Regulation Deficits 7 Ellis et al, 2009), in contrast to proactive aggression, which does not appear to reflect selfregulation deficits (DeWall, Finkel, & Denson, 2011;Rathert, Fite, Gaertner, & Vitulano, 2011).…”

Cool and hot executive function as predictors of aggression in early childhood: Differentiating between the function and form of aggression

“…This contrasts with Rathert et al . 's () finding that inhibition was associated with RPA but not PPA. However, Rathert et al .…”

“…It is unclear therefore whether all aggressive children are characterized by poor EF. Poor EF has been found to be associated with higher reactive, but not proactive, aggression in children aged 6–16 years (Rathert, Fite, Gaertner, & Vitulano, ; White, Jarrett, & Ollendick, ). Added to this, it has been posited that, in comparison to physical aggression, relational aggression involves greater social skill and adaptive functioning due to the increased need to understand and manipulate social networks (Heilbron & Prinstein, ).…”

Heterogeneity in the Development of Proactive and Reactive Aggression in Childhood: Common and Specific Genetic - Environmental Factors

“…Some specifically associated with PA are parents' endorsement of aggressive behavior as an adequate goal-directed behavior [27], lack of parental discipline and monitoring [28][29][30][31][32], affiliation with deviant peers [33,34] and popularity status [35]. In comparison, RA has been associated with hostile attributions toward potential sources of threats or pain [36,37], low effortful control [38,39], and generally to deficits in executive functioning [40,41]. RA has also been associated with traits such as negative emotionality [42], anxiety [26] and anger [43].…”