Relational Aggression in Middle Childhood Predicting Adolescent Social-Psychological Adjustment: The Role of Friendship Quality

Abstract

The present longitudinal study examined the indirect effect of 6th-grade negative friendship quality on the associations between 5th-grade relational aggression and age 15 social-psychological adjustment (i.e., depressive symptoms and risky behavior). The study consisted of a secondary analysis of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development using 776 children (M = 10.42 years in 5th grade; 50.4% boys) from the original sample. Using teacher and self-report ratings, relational and physical aggression, friendship quality, depressive symptoms, and risky behavior were measured. Bootstrapping mediation analyses were conducted. Negative friendship quality was found to mediate the association between relational aggression and depressive symptoms as well as between relational aggression and risky behavior, when controlling for physical aggression, gender and age. This longitudinal study identifies possible developmental pathways by which relational aggression and future social psychological adjustment may be linked.

Externalizing symptoms anticipate declining support and increasing negativity between adolescent friends

“…Typically, positive and negative provisions are (at best) only weakly correlated (Burk & Laursen, 2005;Furman, 1996;Mikami, Szwedo, Allen, Evans, & Hare, 2010;Wang, 2014), suggesting that they are independent relationship dimensions. Consistent with the notion that disruptive behaviours damage relationships over time, longitudinal studies indicate that externalizing symptoms foreshadow a degradation of friendship quality (e.g., Burk & Laursen, 2005;Kamper & Ostrov, 2013). For example, positive forms of friendship quality have been concurrently associated with lower levels of depression in second graders (Stocker, 1994) and with lower levels of anxiety in shy 10-year olds (Fordham & Stevenson-Hinde, 1999).…”

Pubertal Timing and Youth Internalizing Psychopathology: The Role of Relational Aggression

“…These youth may engage in relational aggression in the face of these challenges. In turn, engaging in relationally aggressive behaviors may be a risk factor for developing anxiety and depression because these behaviors interfere with the establishment of positive peer relationships (Kamper & Ostrov, 2013). Congruent with earlier research, early pubertal timing in the current study was associated with relational aggression (Hemphill et al, 2010; Sontag et al, 2011) and, in turn, relational aggression was associated with internalizing problems (Crick, 1996; see Murray-Close et al, 2016, for a review).…”

“…Given that problems with peer relationships have been found to be associated with internalizing problems (Laursen, Bukowski, Aunola, & Nurmi, 2007), theorists have suggested that internalizing problems may result from increased use of relational aggression due to these behaviors interfering with the establishment of positive peer relationships (e.g., Kamper & Ostrov, 2013; Murray-Close, Ostrov & Crick, 2007). There has been some evidence suggesting that the association between relational aggression and depressive symptoms is stronger for girls than for boys (Murray-Close et al, 2016).…”

Susceptibility to peer influence during middle school: Links with social support, peer harassment, and gender

“…Prior research has found that experiences of relational aggression and/or sexual harassment (both as victims and as perpetrators) are associated with a number of psychosocial adjustment concerns. These include externalizing behavioral problems such as antisocial behaviors (Bender & Losel, ), risk‐taking behaviors (Spieker et al, ), physical aggression (Crick, Ostrov, & Werner, ), and delinquency (Crick et al, ; Kamper & Ostrov, ; Sullivan, Farrell, & Kliewer, ), and internalizing behaviors such as difficulty with emotion regulation (Sullivan, Helms, Kliewer, & Goodman, ), depressive symptoms (Fite, Stoppelbein, Greening, & Preddy, ; Kawabata, Crick, & Hamaguchi, ; Spieker et al, ), and suicidal behavior (Fite et al, ; Winsper, Lereya, Zanarini, & Wolke, ). Given the deleterious outcomes associated with relational aggression and sexual harassment, it is important to understand factors that are associated with an increased likelihood of involvement in these behaviors.…”