Growing Up Amid Ethno-Political Conflict: Aggression and Emotional Desensitization Promote Hostility to Ethnic Outgroups.

Ethno-political violence impacts thousands of youth and is associated with numerous negative outcomes. Yet little research examines adaptation to ethno-political violence over time or across multiple outcomes simultaneously. This study examines longitudinal patterns of aggressive behavior and emotional distress as they co-occur among Palestinian (n = 600) youth exposed to ethno-political violence over 3 years in three age cohorts (starting ages: 8, 11, and 14). Findings indicate distinct profiles of aggressive behavior and emotional distress, and unique joint patterns. Furthermore, youth among key joint profiles (e.g., high aggression-emotional desensitization) are more likely to endorse normative beliefs about aggression toward ethnic outgroups. This study offers a dynamic perspective on emotional and behavioral adaptation to ethno-political violence and the implications of those processes.

The influence of American urban culture on the development of normative beliefs about aggression in Middle-Eastern immigrants.

The effects of a community's culture on children's and adolescents' normative beliefs about the appropriateness of aggression were examined. One hundred forty-seven high school students and 103 fourth graders participated in a survey of normative beliefs; 69 high school and 44 elementary school students were of Middle-Eastern background. Although there were no differences in the beliefs of immigrant and nonimmigrant fourth graders, adolescents born in the United States were more accepting of aggression than those who immigrated from the Middle East. Moreover, adolescents who immigrated to the U.S. at age 12 or later were less accepting of aggression than those who immigrated prior to age 12.

Children's normative beliefs about aggression and aggressive behavior.

Normative beliefs have been defined as self-regulating beliefs about the appropriateness of social behaviors. In 2 studies the authors revised their scale for assessing normative beliefs about aggression, found that it is reliable and valid for use with elementary school children, and investigated the longitudinal relation between normative beliefs about aggression and aggressive behavior in a large sample of elementary school children living in poor urban neighborhoods. Using data obtained in 2 waves of observations 1 year apart, the authors found that children tended to approve more of aggression as they grew older and that this increase appeared to be correlated with increases in aggressive behavior. More important, although individual differences in aggressive behavior predicted subsequent differences in normative beliefs in younger children, individual differences in aggressive behavior were predicted by preceding differences in normative beliefs in older children.

Evaluating a cognitive/ecological program for the prevention of aggression among urban children.

The Metropolitan Area Child Study (MACS) is a multifaceted school- and family-based intervention and evaluation study designed to prevent and understand the development of aggressive behavior. The multifaceted interventions are grounded in combined social-cognitive and ecologic theories. Social-cognitive theories contend that cognitive scripts, attributions, and beliefs acquired early in life mediate the effects of ecological factors that influence the development of antisocial behavior. Prevention programs aimed at these cognitions must address multiple dimensions of the child's environment including family, peer, school, and community. The program has three levels of intervention delivered in two-year segments: (1) Level 1: a general enhancement classroom intervention that stresses culturally sensitive student and teacher interaction involving instructional and classroom management strategies and a social-cognitive curriculum that mitigates aggressive development; (2) Level 2: intensive small-group sessions designed to change children's cognitions and enhance peer relationship skills for at-risk children added to the general classroom enhancement program; and (3) Level 3: a one-year family relationship intervention that stresses parenting skill building and emotional responsiveness in family interactions added to the general enhancement and small-group training conditions. Sixteen Chicago-area schools are randomly assigned (four each) to a control group or one of the three intervention levels. Individual child assessment, peer assessments, classroom behavioral observations, and archival data are collected before the interventions begin, during the interventions, at the end of each intervention, and at a follow-up point. The pretests indicate that the children on average have higher levels of aggression than found nationally and elevated clinical levels of other psychopathologies. Across the four intervention levels there are no significant differences in ethnic composition, socio-economic status (SES), aggressive behavior, and normative beliefs about aggression.

Stressful events and individual beliefs as correlates of economic disadvantage and aggression among urban children.

This study examined 3 factors that were hypothesized to increase risk for aggression among urban children: economic disadvantage, stressful events, and individual beliefs. Participants were 1,935 African American, Hispanic, and White elementary-school boys and girls assessed over a 2-year period. The relation between individual poverty and aggression was only significant for the White children, with significant interactions between individual and community poverty for the other 2 ethnic groups. With a linear structural model to predict aggression from the stress and beliefs variables, individual poverty predicted stress for African American children and predicted beliefs supporting aggression for Hispanic children. For all ethnic groups, both stress and beliefs contributed significantly to the synchronous prediction of aggression, and for the Hispanic children, the longitudinal predictions were also significant. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for preventive interventions in multiethnic, inner-city communities.

Attributions for social failure and aggression in incarcerated delinquent youth.

While a variety of cognitive deficits and biases have been found to characterize aggressive and delinquent children and youth, very little attention has focused on determining whether aggressive youth also display deviant attributional beliefs in response to social failure. Research in the more impersonal cognitive domains such as achievement has shown attributions for failure to be potent determinants of both affective reactions and subsequent responding. Thus, the present study was designed to investigate whether specific attributional patterns following social failure may also relate to aggressive behavior. The aim of this study was to determine the relation between the level of self-reported physical aggression and specific attributional patterns following hypothetical social failure in a sample of incarcerated delinquent males. While the general hypotheses were that increased aggressiveness would be related to a greater tendency to endorse attributions for social failure that are external, stable, and controllable, only the hypothesis with regard to controllability was supported. The findings are discussed in terms of the relation between cognition and aggression in delinquent youth.

Childhood correlates of adult ego development.

The present study examined family socioeconomic indicators, parent child-rearing variables, and childhood and adolescent behaviors, which were hypothesized to predict adult ego development. The subjects were 206 females and 192 males, ages 30-31, who began participating in a longitudinal study at age 8. At that time, interviews with their parents yielded data on family background variables and child-rearing practices. Peer-nominations and other testing procedures with the children yielded data on the children's cognitive and behavioral styles at ages 8 and 19. At age 30, the subjects completed the Loevinger Sentence Completion Test of Ego Development. Results confirmed the hypotheses that child-rearing styles characterized by acceptance, a nonauthoritarian approach to punishment, and identification of the child with the parent related to higher levels of adult ego development 22 years later. These relations obtained more strongly for females than for males. In addition, childhood and adolescent indicators of impulse control and cognitive development (nonaggression, prosocial behavior, and intelligence) were associated with higher levels of adult ego development. Finally, hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that the development of aggression was linked to adult ego level attainment in males, while the development of prosocial behavior was related to adult ego development in females.

Intellectual functioning and aggression.

In a 22-year study, data were collected on aggressiveness and intellectual functioning in more than 600 subjects, their parents, and their children. Both aggression and intellectual functioning are reasonably stable in a subject's lifetime and perpetuate themselves across generations and within marriage pairs. Aggression in childhood was shown to interfere with the development of intellectual functioning and to be predictive of poorer intellectual achievement as an adult. Early IQ was related to early subject aggression but did not predict changes in aggression after age 8. On the other hand, differences between early IQ and intellectual achievement in middle adulthood were predictable from early aggressive behavior. A dual-process model was offered to explain the relation between intellectual functioning and aggressive behavior. We hypothesized that low intelligence makes the learning of aggressive responses more likely at an early age, and this aggressive behavior makes continued intellectual development more difficult.

Mitigating the imitation of aggressive behaviors by changing children's attitudes about media violence.

A sample of 169 first- and third-grade children, selected because of their high exposure to television violence, was randomly divided into an experimental and a control group. Over the course of 2 years, the experimental subjects were exposed to two treatments designed to reduce the likelihood of their imitating the aggressive behaviors they observed on TV. The control group received comparable neutral treatments. By the end of the second year, the experimental subjects were rated as significantly less aggressive by their peers, and the relation between violence viewing and aggressiveness was diminished in the experimental group.