Children’s vulnerability and inflammability to peer’s verbal aggression
Date Issued
2006
Date
2006
Author(s)
Yeh, Pei-Chen
DOI
zh-TW
Abstract
Verbal aggression occurs frequently in peer interaction among elementary school students. The purpose of the present research is to investigate, during late childhood, the age, sex, and individual differences of the vulnerability and inflammability in response to peer verbal aggression delivered either by liked or disliked classmates. Specifically, the present study is to compare the differences of vulnerability and inflammability to peer verbal aggression of those who score high or low on proactive aggression, reactive aggression, and victimization. Eleven classes of fourth graders (189 males and 166 females) and eleven classes of sixth graders (190 males and 175 females) in the Metropolitan Taipei area participated in the two-stage study. During the first stage, information about each subject’s liked and disliked classmates and the proactive aggressors, reactive aggressors, and victims in the class was collected through nomination technique. During the second stage, subjects read hypothetical scenarios about receiving verbal aggression or neutral verbal content from his/her liked or disliked classmate. Subjects were to rate their sadness, self-blame, anger, hostility, and distress if the scenarios really had happened. The scores of sadness and self-blame were combined to stand for the vulnerability index and the scores of anger and hostility were combined to stand for the inflammability index. Results demonstrated that six graders in general showed lower vulnerability and inflammability to verbal aggression than their fourth grade counterparts. Verbal aggression from a liked peer induced higher vulnerability. Verbal aggression from a disliked peer resultde in higher inflammability. Children with high proactive-aggression tendency experience lower vulnerability and children with high victimization tendency experience higher vulnerability upon hearing verbal aggression from peers. Contrary to the hypothesis of this study, children with high reactive-aggression tendency do not show higher inflammability in response to peer verbal aggression. The methodological and theoretical implications of the present findings were discussed.
Subjects
負向言語
受傷敏感度
易怒敏感度
主動攻擊
被動攻擊
被欺負
同儕關係
proactive aggression
reactive aggression
victimization
verbal aggression
peer relationship
vulnerability
inflammability
late childhood
sociometrics
Type
other