The Emotions and Social Information Processing Patterns of Aggressive Children

Abstract

This study examined children's emotions, ratings of aggressive behaviors and aggression related social information processing patterns. Second and third grade students completed self-reports of anger and aggression, as well as a measure of SIP. The students' teachers and peers also completed aggression ratings that differentiated between reactive and proactive aggression and overt and relational aggression respectively. Exploratory factor analyses revealed inconsistent results with previous studies regarding the designation of items as "reactive" or "proactive" on aggression ratings scales. Generally, teachers and peers agreed in their ratings of aggression, but did not agree with students' own self-reported aggression. There were modest correlations between hostile SIP responses and reports of aggression, and modest to moderate correlations between hostile SIP responses and self-reported anger. Finally, neither aggression nor anger made a unique contribution to predict SIP hostile intent attribution. However, anger did contribute above and beyond SIP intent attribution to predict self-reported aggression.