Proactive and Reactive Aggression in Delinquent Adolescents: Relations to Aggression Outcome Expectancies

Smithmyer, Catherine M.; Hubbard, Julie A.; Simons, Robert F.

doi:10.1207/s15374424jccp2901_9

Cited by 156 publications

(122 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…In line with previous research (Toblin, Schwartz, Gorman, & Abou-ezzeddine, 2005), we found that t-bullying also related to children's expectations that they would gain positive results from behaving aggressively, which is associated with proactive aggression in youngsters (Smithmyer, et al, 2000) and reflects a deficit in the latter stages of the social information processing (Crick & Dodge, 1994). Our results support the suggestion of Sutton, Smith, & Swettenham (1999), that bullies do not have deficits in interpreting social cues, but in the latter stages of social information processing, during goal and response selection, where the expectancy of positive outcomes from a harmful act increases the likelihood of an aggressive response.…”

Section: Bullying and Cyberbullying 23 23supporting

confidence: 91%

Peer and cyber aggression in secondary school students: the role of moral disengagement, hostile attribution bias, and outcome expectancies

Pornari

Wood

2009

Aggressive Behavior

434

287

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The present study investigated the relationship between cognitive mechanisms applied by people to rationalize and justify harmful acts, and engagement in traditional and cyber bullying among school children. We examined the contribution of Moral Disengagement (MD), Hostile Attribution Bias, and Outcome Expectancies and we further explored the individual contribution of each MD mechanism. Our aim was to identify shared and unique cognitive factors of the two forms of bullying. Three hundred and thirty nine secondary school children completed self-report measures that assessed MD, Hostile Attribution Bias, Outcome Expectancies, and their roles and involvement in traditional and cyber bullying. We found that MD total score positively related to both forms of bullying. Furthermore, traditional bullying positively related to children's moral justification, euphemistic language, displacement of responsibility and outcome expectancies, and negatively associated with hostile attribution bias. Moral justification also related positively to cyberbullying.Cyberbullying and cybervictimization were associated with high levels of traditional bullying and victimization, respectively. The results suggest that MD is a common feature of both traditional and cyber bullying, but it seems that traditional bullying demands a higher level of rationalisation or justification. Moreover, the data suggest that the expectation of positive outcomes from harmful behavior facilitates engagement in traditional bullying. The differential contribution of specific cognitive mechanisms indicates the need for future research to elaborate on the current findings in order to advance theory and inform existing and future antibullying school interventions. Bullying is a subtype of aggression defined as an intentional and repeated aggressive behavior by a group or individual, towards a victim who cannot readily defend himself/herself (Olweus, 1999). Smith and Sharp (1994) describe it as ''a systematic abuse of power'' (p. 2). School bullying is not rare. Various studies in different countries have reported a rate of victimization between 9% -32% and a rate of bullying between 4% -27% (Berger, 2007;Smith et al., 1999). Bullying can be physical (e.g. hitting, kicking), behavioral (e.g. stealing one's lunch,), verbal (e.g. threats, insults), and relational (e.g. exclusion from a group) (Berger). It can be direct or indirect (Underwood, 2000) and it can vary in terms of intensity, duration and motives (Tattum, 1994). In general, boys engage in more physical forms of bullying and girls in more indirect/relational bullying (Rivers & Smith, 1994;Scheitauer, 2002).Bullies and victims suffer from, and are at risk of various psychosocial problems (Card, 2003;Haynie et al., 2001;Hawker & Boulton, 2000;Nansel, Overpeck, Saluja, & Ruan, 2004;Olweus, 1999;Picket et al., 2002).Those who are both bullies and victims, otherwise called aggressive victims, are at higher risk (Duncan, 1999;Wolke, Woods, Bloomfield, & Karstadt, 2000), because they are prone to both ...

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Section: Bullying and Cyberbullying 23 23supporting

confidence: 91%

Peer and cyber aggression in secondary school students: the role of moral disengagement, hostile attribution bias, and outcome expectancies

Pornari

Wood

2009

Aggressive Behavior

434

287

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“…Premeditated aggressive adults score high on measures of anger and hostility questionnaires (Stanford et al, 2003a), although children with premeditated forms of aggression do not have elevated hostility/frustration ratings (Little et al, 2003). Children with premeditated aggression tend to expect positive outcomes from aggressive actions and lack remorse or empathy regarding the use of force (Smithmyer et al, 2000), which may lead to the tendency to use aggression as a tool to achieve a desired outcome. Additionally, children who are rated as more premeditated in their use of aggression have relatively normal parent interactions, peer relations, and ratings of self-worth (Dodge et al, 1997) and are less impaired overall in comparison to their impulsive aggressive counterparts (Waschbusch et al, 1998).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing aggressive behavior with the Impulsive/Premeditated Aggression Scale among adolescents with conduct disorder

Mathias

Stanford

Marsh

et al. 2007

Psychiatry Research

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This study extends the use of the Impulsive/Premeditated Aggression Scale for subtyping aggressive behavior among adolescents with Conduct Disorder. Of the Conduct Disorder symptoms, aggression has the strongest prognostic and treatment implications. While aggression is a complex construct, convergent evidence supports a dichotomy of impulsive and premeditated aggressive subtypes that are qualitatively different from one another in terms of phenomenology and neurobiology. Previous attempts at measuring subtypes of aggression in children and adults are not clearly generalizable to adolescents. Sixty-six adolescents completed a questionnaire for characterizing aggression (Impulsive/Premeditated Aggression Scale), along with standard measures of personality and general functioning. Principal components analysis demonstrated two stable factors of aggression with good internal consistency and construct validity. Compared to the premeditated aggression factor, the impulsive aggression factor was associated with a broader range of personality, thought, emotional, and social problems. As in the adult and child literature, characterization of aggressive behavior into two subtypes appears to be relevant to understanding individual differences among adolescents with Conduct Disorder.

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“…Specifically, SIP problems in early steps (e.g., making inappropriate hostile attributions in the face of ambiguous or benign social stimuli) have been associated with reactive aggression (which has been characterized as an angry retaliatory response to perceived provocation; Dodge & Coie, 1987). In contrast, SIP problems in later steps such as evaluating aggression positively (Smithmyer, Hubbard, & Simons, 2000) and holding instrumental (e.g., obtaining a toy) rather than relational (e.g., becoming friends) goals in social interactions have been associated with proactive aggression (which is unprovoked and goal-directed; Crick & Dodge, 1996). At a broader conceptual level, the early SIP steps involve cognitions about input (i.e., taking in relevant cues from social stimuli and making attributions about others' intentions in those situations), whereas the later SIP steps involve cognitions about output (i.e., desired outcomes, possible responses, and interpretations of behavioral responses in social situations).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A 12-Year Prospective Study of Patterns of Social Information Processing Problems and Externalizing Behaviors

Lansford

Malone

Dodge

et al. 2006

J Abnorm Child Psychol

141

102

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This study investigated how discrete social information processing (SIP) steps may combine with one another to create distinct groups of youth who are characterized by particular patterns of SIP. SIP assessments were conducted on a community sample of 576 children in kindergarten, with follow-up assessments in grades 3, 8, and 11. At each age, four profiles were created, representing youth with no SIP problems, with early step SIP problems (encoding or making hostile attributions), with later step SIP problems (selecting instrumental goals, generating aggressive responses, or evaluating aggression positively), and with pervasive SIP problems. Although patterns of SIP problems were related to concurrent externalizing during elementary school, the consistency between cognition and future externalizing behavior was not as strong in elementary school as it was between grades 8 and 11. In some cases, youth characterized by the co-occurrence of problems in early and later SIP steps had higher externalizing scores than did youth characterized by problems in just one or the other. KeywordsSocial information processing; Externalizing behaviors; Aggression Social information processing (SIP) theory (e.g., Crick & Dodge, 1994) describes a set of cognitive-emotional mechanisms that have been found to account, in part, for the link between a host of risk factors and the subsequent development of aggression. According to this theory, the way that children interpret a particular event influences how they will respond to that Correspondence to: Jennifer E. Lansford, lansford@duke.edu. NIH Public Access NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript situation. Within the field of developmental psychopathology, social information processing theory has been the major theoretical framework for addressing the question of which proximal factors give rise to aggression in particular situations.Dodge and his colleagues (e.g., Crick & Dodge, 1994; Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 1990;Dodge & Schwartz, 1997) have proposed several steps in a model of social information processing: encoding, making attributions, selecting a goal, generating responses, evaluating responses, and enacting responses. First, encoding is the process of taking in information from the environment. Second, making attributions involves deciding what motivates the behavior of other people; on the basis of information children encode from a particular situation, they could decide that others acted with benign, hostile, or ambiguous intent. Third, selecting a goal involves choosing the most desired outcome in a given situation. Fourth, generating responses is the process of thinking of behavioral reactions to a given situation. Fifth, evaluating responses occurs when children assess whether a response is a good one to use in a particular situation and whether that response will be associated with desired outcomes. Finally, enacting responses is the manner in which a child actually behaves. The following specific deficits in each of these six...

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Proactive and Reactive Aggression in Delinquent Adolescents: Relations to Aggression Outcome Expectancies

Cited by 156 publications

References 11 publications

Peer and cyber aggression in secondary school students: the role of moral disengagement, hostile attribution bias, and outcome expectancies

Peer and cyber aggression in secondary school students: the role of moral disengagement, hostile attribution bias, and outcome expectancies

Characterizing aggressive behavior with the Impulsive/Premeditated Aggression Scale among adolescents with conduct disorder

A 12-Year Prospective Study of Patterns of Social Information Processing Problems and Externalizing Behaviors

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