Key issues in the development of aggression and violence from childhood to early adulthood (original) (raw)
Related papers
Determinants Of Aggression Among Young Adolescents
2013
Aggression is a multi- factorial concept and multilevel in nature. The Young Adolescent is being influenced by family, school and community. This paper is aimed to determine the following: aggression level among young adolescents, difference of level of aggression on school and year levels and to determine the correlates of aggression. There were 142 high school students from two different national highs schools (Region 3 and National Capital Region).Convenience sampling was use in this study. The following measures were used namely: Aggression Scale, Parental Support Fighting Scale, Positive Behavior Scale and Exposure to Violence and Trauma questionnaire. There was no significant difference in aggression level among different year level and schools. The findings of the study suggested that high level of community violence and having low parental support for non-aggressive behavior contribute to the prediction of aggression.
Pathways to aggression in children and adolescents
2004
Two approaches to assessing risk factors leading to aggression in children and adolescents are described and compared. The first, the severe risks approach, focuses on how risk factors form a pathway that leads to aggressive behavior. Within this approach, an inhibited victim-aggressor pattern is hypothesized in which children who share certain characteristics, including high-conflict, low-cohesive families, high levels of harsh parental discipline, high levels of victimization by peers, and high behavioral inhibition are at risk for developing defensive, reactive aggressive behaviors. The second, the cumulative effects approach, focuses on the accumulated effects of multiple risk factors in leading to aggressive behavior, irrespective of the particular risk factors involved. Both patterns were assessed longitudinally in a community-based sample, looking at children from middle childhood to adolescence. Strong evidence for both pathways was found.
Personal and Environmental Predictors of Aggression in Adolescence
Brain Sciences, 2021
This study aims to find causal factors of aggression in a group of Latino adolescents to achieve a greater understanding of human nature, taking into account personal and contextual variables. The fundamental hypothesis is that moral disengagement, personality traits, self-esteem, values, parenting, sex, and socioeconomic situation can function as possible casual factors of aggression in adolescents. The study examined the variables using the structural equations model (SEM) to determine causal factors of aggression in a sample of 827 adolescents (54% men and 46% women) between 11 and 16 years of age. According to the scientific literature review, sociodemographic, personal, and familiar variables were included in the causal model. The influence of the variables occurred in two ways: one that inhibits aggression and the other that reinforces it. The results are discussed based on identifying protective and risk factors against aggression: biological sex and values of conformity and transcendence as aggression’s inhibitors and, on the other hand, openness, moral disengagement, and leadership values as the most important predictors of aggression.
Assessing children and adolescents for potential violent behavior requires an organized approach that draws on clinical knowledge, a thorough diagnostic interview, and familiarity with relevant risk and protective factors. This article reviews empirical evidence on risk factors, the impact of peers, developmental pathways, physiological markers, subtyping of aggression, and differences in patterns of risk behaviors between sexes. We explore these determinants of violence in children and adolescents with attention to the underlying motivations and etiology of violence to delineate the complexity, unanswered questions, and clinical relevance of the current research. Interventions, including cognitive behavioral therapy, psychopharmacological treatment, and psychosocial treatment, are reviewed with acute recognition of the need to use multiple modalities with, and to expand research to define optimal treatment for, potentially violent children and adolescents. The information considered for this review focuses on violence as defined as physical aggression toward other individuals. Other studies are included with wider definitions of violence because of their relevance to assessing the potential for violent behavior.
Journal of Research on Adolescence, 2009
This study examined the prediction of different forms of adult aggression in two countries from child and adolescent aggression. It was based on two longitudinal projects: the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development (JYLS; N = 196 boys and 173 girls) conducted in Finland and the Columbia County Longitudinal Study (CCLS; N = 436 males and 420 females) conducted in the USA. The same peer-nominated items for aggression were used in both studies at age 8; comparable measures of aggression also were available in adolescence (age 14 in the JYLS/ 19 in the CCLS) and adulthood (ages 36/30 and 42/48). Results showed that in both countries and in both genders, aggression in childhood was linked significantly to physical aggression and lack of self-control of anger in adulthood but not to verbal aggression. This differential predictability of aggression over 40 years suggests that individual differences in physical aggression are more determined by lasting individual differences (including emotional reactivity) than are individual differences in verbal aggression.
Profiles of the forms and functions of self-reported aggression in three adolescent samples
Development and Psychopathology, 2014
In the current study, we addressed several issues related to the forms (physical and relational) and functions (reactive and proactive) of aggression in community (n = 307), voluntary residential (n = 1,917) and involuntarily detained (n = 659) adolescents (ages 11 to 19 years). Across samples, boys self-reported more physical aggression and girls reported more relational aggression, with the exception of higher levels of both forms of aggression in detained girls. Further, few boys showed high rates of relational aggression without also showing high rates of physical aggression. In contrast, it was not uncommon for girls to show high rates of relational aggression alone and these girls tended to also have high levels of problem behavior (e.g., delinquency) and mental health problems (e.g., emotional dysregulation, callousunemotional traits). Finally, for physical aggression in both boys and girls, and for relational aggression in girls, there was a clear pattern of aggressive behavior that emerged from cluster analyses across samples. Two aggression clusters emerged with one group showing moderately high reactive aggression and a second group showing both high reactive and high proactive aggression (combined group). On measures of severity (e.g., self-reported delinquency and arrests) and etiologically important variables (e.g., emotional regulation and callous-unemotional traits), the reactive aggression group was more severe than a non-aggressive cluster but less severe than the combined aggressive cluster.
Seven Hundred Crimes of Violence by 80 Boys: A Follow-Up Study of Childhood Aggressiveness
Journal of Psychiatry and Cognitive Behaviour, 2017
DSM-III defined an Aggressive subtype of Conduct disoder; removed from later DSM-versions. The aim of this study was to analyse correlates of aggression and its predictive power from childhood up to age 57 in very advanced juvenile delinquents. 80 boys entered the study 1975-76 while being cared for in a national (last resort) Juvenile Correction (JC) school. All boys had serious behavioural problems with onset before age 12. Scores on a 4-point Childhood Aggression Behaviour (CAB) scale were bimodal. Aggression was retrospectively associated with poor socioeconomic conditions and school problems, predicted violent crimes and discipline problems during JC, and violent crimes but not other crimes or social outcome in adulthood (at age 30). Mortality was high, Relative Risk was 8 at age 30 and 44% were dead at age 57 (20 lost years of life). The predictive power of CAB for future crimes of violence suggests that the Aggressive subtype of DSM-III CD maybe should be reintroduced.
Journal of Family Violence, 2008
Literature suggests that early patterns of aggressive behavior in both girls and boys are predictive of later violent behavior, including violence that takes place within family contexts. Utilizing the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project, a study of individuals recruited as children in the 1970s from inner-city schools in Montreal, this study examined different pathways whereby aggressive behavioral styles in childhood may place individuals at risk for continuing patterns of violence towards children and spouses. Childhood aggression directly predicted self-reported violence towards spouse for both sexes, with indirect routes through lowered educational attainment and marital separation. Aggression in childhood was also found to predict parents' self-reports of using violence with their children. For mothers, educational attainment and current absence of the biological father from the child's home also played important roles in predicting violent behavior towards offspring. These findings provide evidence of both continuity of aggressive behavior and indirect risk paths to family violence, via lower educational attainment and parental absence. In both men and women, childhood aggression may be an identifiable precursor of family violence and child abuse.