Preadolescents’ Responses to Indirect Aggression in Peer Context: Victimization Experiences and Response Evaluation
Date Issued
2010
Date
2010
Author(s)
Wang, Ming-Chuan
Abstract
A new conceptual model is proposed in the present study to investigate preadolescents’ experience, emotions, and cognition of victimization by peer indirect aggression. In this model, two forms of social manipulation as vehicles of harm are specified, namely, social-relationship manipulation and social-information manipulation. In the present research, the validity of this model was investigated across two studies through (1) comparing between the perceived strength of harm of the two forms of indirect aggression, (2) testing how children’s peer status and gender is related to the victimization experience of indirect aggression, and (3) examining how children’s social adjustment status and gender is related to the response evaluation of indirect aggression. Data in both Study 1 and 2 was collected in two group sessions through peer nomination sociometrics, peer estimation technique, self-report, and standardized SIP activity-based procedure. A total of 550 sixth to eighth graders in Taiwan participated in Study 1. Results indicated that the strengths of harm after being attacked by manipulations of social-relationship and social-information varied as a function of gender. Besides, preadolescents felt significantly more painful after being attacked by peer manipulation of social-information than by that of social-relationship. In addition, across gender, rejected preadolescents were more frequently the targets of indirect aggression than were their popular counterparts. Boys evaluated manipulation of social-information as more effective than girls. By contrast, no gender difference was found in the response evaluation of the manipulation of social relationship. In Study 2, a total of 797 sixth to eighth graders were assessed the same way as in Study 1. All of the above findings of Study 1 were successfully replicated in Study 2. In addition, Study 2 also revealed that highly-aggressive/highly-victimized individuals were more likely to evaluate indirectly aggressive responses as effective ways to react back to peer’s indirect aggression. However, this main effect was qualified by the three-way interaction effect of gender, social adjustment status, and peer context. The above results were discussed in terms of the conceptual, measurement, and developmental issues about indirect aggression.
Subjects
indirect aggression
peer victimization
social adjustment
social information-processing
peer relationships
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