Developing Learned Resourcefulness in Adolescents to Help Them Reduce Their Aggressive Behavior: Preliminary Findings

Abstract

This article describes a school-based aggression reduction intervention program aiming to impart highly aggressive adolescents with a learned resourcefulness repertoire, using Ronen and Rosenbaum's four-module self-control model. Intervention aimed to teach adolescents that aggression is changeable behavior resulting from how they think and feel, emphasizing cause-effect relations; to facilitate their identification of internal cues, sensations, and emotions and their links to behavior; and to help them identify and acquire self-control skills, e.g., delaying temptation, using self-talk, and planning steps toward achieving goals. Participants were 447 ninth graders: 167 underwent intervention, and 280 from the same schools received no intervention (controls). Outcomes indicate the model's efficacy in reducing aggression. In the intervention group, both objective and subjective aggression rates decreased significantly compared to baseline and controls. Hostile thoughts and negative emotions did not change, suggesting adolescents could now control these without behaving aggressively. Analysis attributed aggression reduction to increased self-control skills.

High self-control protects the link between social support and positivity ratio for Israeli students exposed to contextual risk

“…At the macro level of school-wide preventive programs, it would be advisable to introduce students to cognitive and behavioral strategies that teach SCS, social competency, and pro-social friendship skills, which are important for achieving social support and, optimally, increasing PR. At the micro level of individual students, imparting cognitive and emotional SCS to students may help them maintain internal arousal within a manageable social interaction, whereas behavioral SCS may help them adjust their reactions to external social circumstances (e.g., Ronen & Rosenbaum, 2010). Such interventions may help students behave constructively, consider others' needs and rights, and adjust their own needs and rights to provide a mutually acceptable behavioral outlet from an emotionally arousing situation (Pulkkinen, Kaprio, & Rose, 1999).…”

“…Participants rate items on a scale ranging from 1 (not characteristic of me at all) to 6 (very characteristic of me), with higher scores indicating higher SCS. Evidence for validity was established through significant positive correlations with a measure of positive automatic thoughts (r = .34, p b .001) and significant negative correlations with depressive symptoms (r = − .37, p b .001) (Zauszniewski, Bekhet, & Bonham, 2010) and aggression (r = −.48, p b .01) (Ronen & Rosenbaum, 2010). Reliability evidence for scores obtained on the scale's Hebrew version included a low but statistically significant 4-week test-retest reliability (r = .46, p b .01) and internal consistency coefficients ranging from α = .76 to .80 (Orkibi et al, 2014;Ronen & Rosenbaum, 2010).…”

“…This model of self-control skills (SCS) was chosen because it views self-control as a set of basic developmental skills that has strong implications for psycho-educational interventions that have been found to improve students' functioning (Ronen & Rosenbaum, 2010). Studies on general (not at-risk) adolescent populations in Israel found significant associations between SCS and more positive emotions, a high positivity ratio, and social support, as well as fewer negative emotions (Orkibi, Hamama, Gavriel-Fried, & Ronen, 2015;Orkibi, Ronen, & Assoulin, 2014;Ronen & Seeman, 2007), hostility, aggression, physical violence, and delinquent behavior (Hamama & Ronen-Shenhav, 2012;Ronen, Abuelaish, Rosenbaum, Agbaria, & Hamama, 2013).…”

Positive Emotions as a Moderator of the Associations Between Self-Control and Social Support Among Adolescents with Risk Behaviors

“…Responses are scored between −3 (low self-control) and +3 (high selfcontrol), yielding a total score ranging from −96 to +96, where higher scores indicate higher self-control. The ASCS reliability (Cronbach α) was .81 in Ronen and Rosenbaum (2010) and .82 in the present study.…”

Wie kommt die Moral in den Kopf?

“…Das deuten Ergebnisse einer eigenen Längsschnittstudie bei Eltern und Kindern über Ursachen kindlicher Aggressivität an (Wahl und Metzner 2012 Schulische Programme können die Selbstkontrolle zur Vorbeugung von Aggression etwas verbessern. Dabei bleiben allerdings die feindseligen Gedanken und negativen Emotionen bestehen, nur können sie besser im Schach gehalten werden, anstatt in Gewalt zu münden (Ronen 2010).…”