Children's exposure to violent political conflict stimulates aggression at peers by increasing emotional distress, aggressive script rehearsal, and normative beliefs favoring aggression

Abstract

We examine the hypothesis that children's exposure to ethnic-political conflict and violence over the course of a year stimulates their increased aggression toward their own in-group peers in subsequent years. In addition, we examine what social cognitive and emotional processes mediate these effects and how these effects are moderated by gender, age, and ethnic group. To accomplish these aims, we collected three waves of data from 901 Israeli and 600 Palestinian youths (three age cohorts: 8, 11, and 14 years old) and their parents at 1-year intervals. Exposure to ethnic-political violence was correlated with aggression at in-group peers among all age cohorts. Using a cross-lagged structural equation model from Year 1 to Year 3, we found that the relation between exposure and aggression is more plausibly due to exposure to ethnic-political violence stimulating later aggression at peers than vice versa, and this effect was not moderated significantly by gender, age cohort, or ethnic group. Using three-wave structural equation models, we then showed that this effect was significantly mediated by changes in normative beliefs about aggression, aggressive script rehearsal, and emotional distress produced by the exposure. Again the best fitting model did not allow for moderation by gender, age cohort, or ethnic group. The findings are consistent with recent theorizing that exposure to violence leads to changes both in emotional processes promoting aggression and in the acquisition through observational learning of social cognitions promoting aggression.

Serious violent behavior and antisocial outcomes as consequences of exposure to ethnic‐political conflict and violence among Israeli and Palestinian youth

“…In our own analysis of the first 3 years of longitudinal data from the current study of Israeli and Palestinian 8-14-year-olds, exposure to ethnic-political conflict/violence was significantly related to subsequent aggression toward peers, even after controlling for a range of demographic and contextual factors (Boxer et al, 2013;Huesmann et al, 2017). Structural modeling analyses showed that the most plausible explanation was that exposure to ethnic-political violence was stimulating aggression against peers by increasing beliefs accepting violence against peers, stimulating rehearsal of aggressive scripts, and stimulating emotional discontent (Huesmann et al, 2017). Other analyses showed that greater exposure to political violence in the media was also longitudinally related to higher levels of aggression at peers independently of exposure to violence in other contexts (Dvir Gvirsman et al, 2014).…”

“…Despite the growing body of work on the impact of exposure to ethnic-political violence on the development of aggressive behaviors in youth, very little of this research has considered whether exposure to ethnic-political violence increases the likelihood of involvement in very serious forms of aggressive, violent, and antisocial behavior. Data analyzed to address this were collected as part of the Palestinian-Israeli Exposure to Violence Study (Boxer et al, 2013;Huesmann et al, 2017). This is a 4-wave prospective study of Israeli and Palestinian youth in three starting age cohorts (ages 8, 11, and 14) who were assessed annually for 3 consecutive years, and again 4 years later when the three cohorts were 14, 17, and 20 years of age, respectively.…”

Developmental Predictors of Violent Extremist Attitudes

“…Prolonged exposure to political violence can act as a stressor that leads to anger, anxiety, and depression (Garbarino and Kostelny 1996). Studies examining the effect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on support for extremism find that both direct and indirect exposure to conflict increase negative emotions and feelings that an individual or group is under threat from the other or out-group (Heath et al 2013;Hirsch-Hoefler et al 2014;Hobfoll et al 2009;Huesmann et al 2017). Hirsch-Hoefler et al (2014) found that Israelis and Palestinians exposed to political violence were more likely to report psychological distress, perceive group threat, and less likely to support peaceful means of political conflict resolution.…”

Self-Regulation of Emotion in Students in Yogyakarta Indonesia: Gender Differences

“…However, many adolescent are in fact unable to control their emotions and this condition is known as aggressive behavior (García-Sancho, Salguero, & Fernández-Berrocal, 2017;Huesmann et al, 2017;Sullivan, Garthe, Goncy, Carlson, & Behrhorst, 2017;Valois, Zullig, & Revels, 2017) and bullying (Jenkins, Demaray, & Tennant, 2017;Zych, Farrington, Llorent, & Ttofi, 2017). Aggressive behavior is a problem that needs more attention.…”