Lecture 18 - Aggression and Antisocial Behaviour PDF

Lecture 18 - Aggression and Antisocial Behaviour Aggression Intentional behaviour aimed at hurting others Instumental Aggression (direct) o Aimed at achieving a goal. o Physical aggression Relational Aggression (indirect) o Aimed at harming oth...

Lecture 18 - Aggression and Antisocial Behaviour Aggression Intentional behaviour aimed at hurting others Instumental Aggression (direct) o Aimed at achieving a goal. o Physical aggression Relational Aggression (indirect) o Aimed at harming others’ interpersonal relationships o Exclusion, gossiping Antisocial Behaviour Behaviour that violates rules or conventions of society Conduct Problems o A more generic term for these types of behaviours. Are antisocial and prosocial behaviour direct opposites Evidence suggests they are correlate bt distinct o Different developmental patterns o Different predictors and outcomes Can be both Early Aggression (Hay et al., 2021) o Birthday party study. o 18 months of age start tugging and using bodily force. 3 years of age o Physical aggression decreases o Development of language maybe? o Relational aggression increases from toddlerhood to childhood. 17-18 years o Adolescence peak of antisocial behaviour o Then decreases. Continuity of Aggressive Behaviour Physical aggression seen in low levels in most typically developing toddlers Small group continue to show physically aggressive behaviour throughout childhood. Eron et al (1987) o Teacher ratings of aggression at age 8 ▪ Categories into low medium and high o Then followed up at 30, early category predicted later aggression. o Rates of aggression in childhood predict later antisocial behaviour Moffit (1993) Life-Course Persistent Antisocial Behaviour In general, small peak in early aggression, reasonably low for most. Group who has high levels very young that continues throughout their life course. Split antisocial behaviour into o Just antisocial behaviour in a particular age group o Life course persistent group. Risk Factors for Aggression Gender Differences in Aggression Males are more likely to be aggressive Differences develops from toddlerhood and increases into childhood and adolescence. o Girls less aggressive, but do more relational (indirect) aggression, whereas boys mainly instrumental (direct) aggression. Importance of Genetic Factors Twin Studies: Genetic factors important but not everything. o 40% of variance in aggression associated with genes. (don’t need that stat) o Environmental factors more important Cloninger et al., (1982) Adoption study (N=862) o Separate environmental and genetic factors. o Looked at criminal records. o Baseline – 3% o Just environmental – 7% o Just genetic → 12% o Genetics more important than environment o Biological + Environmental → 40% Early and Prenatal Risk Factors Maternal age → younger parents associated with child aggression. Maternal stress during pregnancy (Rice et al., 2008) → child aggression Prenatal Depression and Antisocial Behaviour (Hay et al., 2010) 2-fold increase in antisocial behaviour if mother depression during pregnancy 4-fold increase in likelihood of being violent as teenagers. Individual Factors Temperament Difficult temperament → associated with later aggression and delinquency Maybe infants expressing their aggression as being difficult and this continues into life. Considering your infant to be difficult = treating them differently. Emotion Recognition and Aggression (Fairchild et al., 2009) Looked at children with conduct problems. o Not as good at identifying negative emotions like anger and fear. Associated with reduced empathy. Not as good at recognising emotions and then don’t react in an inappropriate way → cyclical. Denham et al., 2002 Longitudinal study over a year of 127 children Did emotion identification and ToM tasks. As teachers a year later to rate aggression. Poorer knowledge of emotions associated with aggression Start early on and continue Social Cognition and Aggression Hostile attribution bias (Dodge, 1980) – see more hostile intent in ambiguous situations o 90 primary boys, aggressive/not aggressive o Children told stories with ambiguous intent o Aggressive more likely to interpret as hostile. Self-fulfilling prophecies o Reacting to perceived hostile intent leads to aggressive behaviour → reinforces attributions o If child labelled as aggressive assumed to be more aggressive in intent. Family Factors: Parenting Parental monitoring → poor monitoring inconsistent parenting associated with child aggression o If rules can be overturned by aggressive behaviours you will do that. Punitive parenting → (maybe authoritarian) and physical punishment associated with child aggression Bidirectional effect → children who are more difficult to parent associated with poorer child-parent relationship. How do parenting factors affect child aggression Social Learning Theory Bandura → imitating aggressive behaviour.  o Children seeing aggressive behaviour learn this. Violent Media and Aggression Viewing aggression leads to situational aggression o Administering hot sauce Fergusson et al. (2015) → review and meta-analysis o Watching violent shit always a hot topic, but actually very small effects overall. ▪ Many studies don’t control for early aggression ▪ Like young people who are violent just enjoy watching violent programmes more. o Measures of aggression are not generalisable. o Lots of confounding factors ▪ Parental monitoring, associated with aggression and associated with being allowed to watch more violent programmes. o Selective interpretation of findings in studies → publication bias. Peer Influences (Keenan et al., 1995) if you associate with deviant peers, you are 3 times more likely to take part in delinquent activity Concurrent associations → current associations predict deviance o stronger Predictive associations → previous exposure to deviant peers predicts delinquent activity. Classroom (Busching & Krahe, 2018) Looked at 16,000 students and 253 class. Broke individuals into → non deviant (lowest 25th percentile) and deviant (highest 85th percentile) Start off antisocial and antisocial classroom = you are antisocial Start off less antisocial and antisocial classroom = you are likely to become antisocial o Steeper line if not initially deviant. Peer Rejection and Aggression Sociometric Status (Dodge et al., 2003) Rejected peers, o Aggressive-rejected children Children followed from 5 → 8 years Annually rated how they liked each class and pick 3 fav and least liked. o Identified 11% as rejected. Teacher rated aggression scores. Split 11% into already aggressive and below medium aggressive o Already aggressive and rejected = continue to be aggressive with increased rejection o Not aggressive = remain below mean for being aggressive regardless of aggression. Effects of rejection only seen for already aggressive children Societal Factors Central Mexican Towns (Fry, 1988) o Towns either rated as violent or not violent. o Violent town = children 2x more likely to engage in violent acts than nonviolent. Vanfossen (2010) o Neighbourhood effects on violence. o Controlled for individual factors. o Girls ▪ Nonviolent town → start and remain nonviolent ▪ Violent → start nonviolent and become increasingly violent o Boys ▪ Violent town → start of reasonably low (but higher than girls) become more aggressive with time.