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Journal of Clinical Child and... 2020The goal of this study is to develop a rational data-driven definition of impulsive/reactive aggression and establish distinctions between impulsive/reactive aggression...
The goal of this study is to develop a rational data-driven definition of impulsive/reactive aggression and establish distinctions between impulsive/reactive aggression and other common childhood problems. This is a secondary analysis of data from Assessing Bipolar: A Community Academic Blend (ABACAB; = 636, ages 5-18), Stanley Medical Research Institute = 392, ages 5-17), and the Longitudinal Assessment of Manic Symptoms (LAMS; = 679, ages 6-12) studies, which recruited youths seeking outpatient mental health services in academic medical centers and community clinics. Following Jensen et al.'s (2007) procedure, 3 judges independently rated items from several widely used scales in terms of assessing impulsive/reactive aggression. Principal components analyses (PCA) modeled structure of the selected items supplemented by items related to mood symptoms, rule-breaking behavior, and hyperactivity/impulsivity to better define the boundaries between impulsive/reactive aggression and other common childhood symptoms. In the rational item selection process, there was good agreement among the 3 experts who rated items as characterizing impulsive/reactive aggression or not. PCA favored 5 dimension solutions in all 3 samples. Across all samples, PCA resulted in rule-breaking behavior, aggression-impulsive/reactive (AIR), mania, and depression dimensions; there was an additional hyperactive/impulsive dimension in the LAMS sample and a self-harm dimension in ABACAB and Stanley samples. The dimensions demonstrated good internal consistency; criterion validity coefficients also showed consistency across samples. This study is a step toward developing an empirically derived nosology of impulsive aggression/AIR. Findings support the validity of the AIR construct, which can be distinguished from manic and depressive symptoms as well as rule-breaking behavior.
Topics: Adolescent; Aggression; Child; Female; Humans; Impulsive Behavior; Male; Reproducibility of Results
PubMed: 31343896
DOI: 10.1080/15374416.2019.1622121 -
Journal of Youth and Adolescence Oct 2022Awareness that high-status adolescents can be targets of aggression has grown in recent years. However, questions remain about the associations of the confluence of...
Awareness that high-status adolescents can be targets of aggression has grown in recent years. However, questions remain about the associations of the confluence of victimization and popularity with adjustment. The current study fills this gap by examining the joint and unique effects of victimization and popularity on aggression and alcohol use. Participants were 804 Dutch adolescents (50.2% boys, M = 13.65) who were followed for one year. High-status victims were more aggressive and drank more alcohol than lower-status victims. High-status victims were also more proactively and indirectly aggressive and self-reported more bullying than high-status non-victims. Thus, the findings demonstrated a conjoined risk of victimization and popularity for some types of aggression.
Topics: Adolescent; Aggression; Alcohol Drinking; Bullying; Crime Victims; Female; Humans; Male; Peer Group
PubMed: 35776230
DOI: 10.1007/s10964-022-01649-7 -
International Journal of Law and... 2022Despite the presence of theoretical frameworks explaining aggression, they still require refinement in the form of a specification of mechanisms that facilitate such...
OBJECTIVE
Despite the presence of theoretical frameworks explaining aggression, they still require refinement in the form of a specification of mechanisms that facilitate such behaviour.
METHOD
Study 1 recruited participants (N = 31) from the general population (N = 20) and from a forensic hospital (N = 11). It was expected that aggression supportive cognitions and stress would be positively associated with aggressive behaviour. An experimental paradigm was used to induce stress and participants were subsequently given the opportunity to aggress. Study 2 was based on self-report questionnaires in community sample (N = 462). It was expected that aggressive behaviour and traits would be associated with experienced stress, hostile attributions, coping styles, and attitudes to violence. Specifically, that criminal attitudes to violence will mediate the effect of hostile attribution on aggression, while coping styles will mediate the effect of perceived stress.
RESULTS
An Implicit Theory "I am the law" was found to be associated with aggression. Furthermore, elevated skin conductance, but not changes in the heart rate, during the stress task was positively associated with aggression, and only among patients. Structural Equation Model confirmed the mediating role of criminal attitudes to violence and of maladaptive coping style for aggressive behaviour.
CONCLUSION
Aggression-supportive cognitions and maladaptive coping style are specific mechanisms through which external demands or subjective perception of a situation can result in aggressive behaviour.
Topics: Humans; Aggression; Hostility; Cognition; Violence; Adaptation, Psychological
PubMed: 36351356
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijlp.2022.101842 -
Administration and Policy in Mental... May 2023Instances of violence and aggression in acute psychiatric settings are common and highly distressing for service users and staff. They also incur financial costs. This...
Instances of violence and aggression in acute psychiatric settings are common and highly distressing for service users and staff. They also incur financial costs. This study aimed to identify the proportion of service users at risk of consistent violence/aggression enactment. It also aimed to analyse associated service use to explore the potential need for specialised, targeted approaches. Five years' worth of data were extracted from 2016 to 2020 on inpatient stays across South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) acute adult wards and Psychiatric Intensive Care Units (PICUs). Service users were divided into cohorts based on relative number of violent/agressive incidents enacted. Differences in frequency of acute service use during the period 1 January-31 December 2020 were analysed. In total, 2524 service users had at least one inpatient stay during 2020. 679 were recorded as having enacted at least one incident of violence or aggression. Just 4% of all service users accounted for 50% of all violence/aggression enactment. Results further showed strong evidence of group differences between violence cohorts in the following domains: internal transfers, occupied bed days, admissions and Place of Safety (PoS) referrals. There was weaker evidence for group differences in referrals to Home Treatment teams (HTTs) and Psychiatric Liaison Teams. A small proportion of service users disproportionately account for the majority of violent and aggressive incidents and higher levels of violence and aggression are associated with more acute service use. The provision of targeted, personalised interventions for this cohort may reduce the enactment of violence and aggression, leading to improved quality life and a reduction in financial expenditure.
Topics: Adult; Humans; Inpatients; Violence; Aggression; Mental Health Services; Hospitalization; Mental Disorders
PubMed: 36918493
DOI: 10.1007/s10488-023-01251-4 -
NeuroImage Feb 2021New insights into the functional neuroanatomic correlates of emotions point toward the involvement of the cerebellum in anger and aggression. To identify cerebellar... (Meta-Analysis)
Meta-Analysis
New insights into the functional neuroanatomic correlates of emotions point toward the involvement of the cerebellum in anger and aggression. To identify cerebellar regions commonly activated in tasks examining the experience of anger and threat as well as exerting an aggressive response, two coordinate-based activation likelihood estimation meta-analyses reporting a total of 57 cerebellar activation foci from 819 participants were performed. For anger processing (18 studies), results showed significant clusters in the bilateral posterior cerebellum, overlapping with results from previous meta-analyses on emotion processing, and implying functional connectivity to cognitive, limbic, and social canonic networks in the cerebral cortex. By contrast, active aggression expression (10 studies) was associated with significant clusters in more anterior regions of the cerebellum, overlapping with cerebellar somatosensory and motor regions and displaying functional connectivity with the somatomotor and default mode network. This study not only strengthens the notion that the cerebellum is involved in emotion processing, but also provides the first quantitative evidence for distinct cerebellar functional activation patterns related to anger and aggression.
Topics: Aggression; Anger; Cerebellum; Default Mode Network; Functional Neuroimaging; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Neural Pathways
PubMed: 33221449
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117582 -
PeerJ 2023To explore the impact of sports on aggression in children and adolescents and analyze whether different conditions in the intervention, such as type of sports, or... (Meta-Analysis)
Meta-Analysis
OBJECTIVE
To explore the impact of sports on aggression in children and adolescents and analyze whether different conditions in the intervention, such as type of sports, or intervention duration, have different influences on the effect of interventions.
METHOD
The study protocol was registered in PROSPERO (CRD42022361024). We performed a systematic search of Pubmed, Web of Science, Cochrane library, Embase and Scopus databases from database inception to 12 October 2022 for all studies written in English. Studies were included if they met the following PICO criteria. All analyses were carried out using the Review Manager 5.3 Software. We summarized aggression, hostility and anger scores using SMDs. Summary estimates with 95% confidence intervals were pooled using DerSimonian-Laird random effects model or fixed effects model according to between-study heterogeneity.
RESULTS
A total of 15 studies were deemed eligible for inclusion in this review. The overall mean effect size indicated that sport interventions was associated with lower aggression (SMD = -0.37, 95% CI [-0.69 to -0.06], = 0.020; = 88%). Subgroup analyses showed that non-contact sports were associated with lower aggression (SMD = -0.65, 95% CI [-1.17 to -0.13], = 0.020; = 92%) but high-contact sports were not (SMD = -0.15, 95% CI [-0.55 to 0.25], = 0.470; = 79%). In addition, when intervention duration <6 months, sport interventions was associated with lower aggression (SMD = -0.99, 95% CI [-1.73 to -0.26], = 0.008; = 90%) and when intervention duration ≥ 6 months, sport interventions was not associated with lower aggression (SMD = -0.08, 95% CI [-0.44 to -0.28], = 0.660; = 87%).
CONCLUSION
This review confirmed that sports intervention can reduce the aggression of children and adolescents. We suggested that schools can organize young people to participate in low-level, non-contact sports to reduce the occurrence of bullying, violence and other aggression-related adverse events. Additional studies are needed to determine which other variables are associated with aggression in children and adolescents, in order to develop a more detailed and comprehensive intervention programme to reduce their aggression.
Topics: Child; Adolescent; Humans; Aggression; Violence; Schools; Sports; Bullying
PubMed: 37334131
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.15504 -
Journal of Youth and Adolescence Mar 2022Adolescents' aggressive behavior has been often linked to biases in morality. However, limited knowledge is available regarding the relative strength of different moral...
Adolescents' aggressive behavior has been often linked to biases in morality. However, limited knowledge is available regarding the relative strength of different moral correlates, both at the individual and class-level, in predicting different types of aggressive behavior over time. To address this gap, the present study tested the prospective associations of moral identity and moral disengagement with reactive and proactive aggression in a short-term longitudinal study. The sample consisted of 1158 Italian adolescents (48.7% females; M = 13.6 years, SD = 1.1). Participants completed self-report measures of moral identity, moral disengagement, perceived collective moral disengagement in the fall, and reactive and proactive aggression in the fall and in the spring. Multivariate multilevel analysis indicated that, at the individual level, after controlling for the stability of aggressive behavior, T2 (Time 2) reactive aggression was higher for students who reported lower moral identity and higher moral disengagement at T1 (Time 1). For proactive aggression, a significant interaction effect indicated that the negative association between T1 moral identity and T2 aggression was apparent only at high levels of T1 moral disengagement. Moreover, proactive aggression was significantly predicted by higher perceived collective moral disengagement. At the class-level, T1 collective moral disengagement helped explain between-class variability of T2 reactive and proactive aggressive behavior. How these results expand previous research on morality and aggressive behavior and their potential implications for prevention and intervention programs is discussed.
Topics: Adolescent; Adolescent Behavior; Aggression; Female; Humans; Longitudinal Studies; Male; Morals; Peer Group
PubMed: 34661788
DOI: 10.1007/s10964-021-01518-9 -
ELife Apr 2020Although the cerebellum is traditionally associated with balance and motor function, it also plays wider roles in affective and cognitive behaviors. Evidence suggests...
Although the cerebellum is traditionally associated with balance and motor function, it also plays wider roles in affective and cognitive behaviors. Evidence suggests that the cerebellar vermis may regulate aggressive behavior, though the cerebellar circuits and patterns of activity that influence aggression remain unclear. We used optogenetic methods to bidirectionally modulate the activity of spatially-delineated cerebellar Purkinje cells to evaluate the impact on aggression in mice. Increasing Purkinje cell activity in the vermis significantly reduced the frequency of attacks in a resident-intruder assay. Reduced aggression was not a consequence of impaired motor function, because optogenetic stimulation did not alter motor performance. In complementary experiments, optogenetic inhibition of Purkinje cells in the vermis increased the frequency of attacks. These results suggest Purkinje cell activity in the cerebellar vermis regulates aggression, and further support the importance of the cerebellum in driving affective behaviors that could contribute to neurological disorders.
Topics: Aggression; Animals; Behavior, Animal; Cerebellar Vermis; Cerebellum; Mice; Optogenetics; Purkinje Cells
PubMed: 32343225
DOI: 10.7554/eLife.53229 -
Nature Human Behaviour Sep 2022Third-party punishment of antisocial others is unique to humans and seems to be universal across cultures. However, its emergence in ontogeny remains unknown. We...
Third-party punishment of antisocial others is unique to humans and seems to be universal across cultures. However, its emergence in ontogeny remains unknown. We developed a participatory cognitive paradigm using gaze-contingency techniques, in which infants can use their gaze to affect agents displayed on a monitor. In this paradigm, fixation on an agent triggers the event of a stone crushing the agent. Throughout five experiments (total N = 120), we show that eight-month-old infants punished antisocial others. Specifically, infants increased their selective looks at the aggressor after watching aggressive interactions. Additionally, three control experiments excluded alternative interpretations of their selective gaze, suggesting that punishment-related decision-making influenced looking behaviour. These findings indicate that a disposition for third-party punishment of antisocial others emerges in early infancy and emphasize the importance of third-party punishment for human cooperation. This behavioural tendency may be a human trait acquired over the course of evolution.
Topics: Aggression; Antisocial Personality Disorder; Humans; Infant; Personality; Punishment
PubMed: 35680993
DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01354-2 -
BMC Psychiatry Mar 2023Left-behind adolescents (LBAs) are adolescents aged 11-18 years who are separated from their parents and left behind in local cities by one or both parents for a...
BACKGROUND
Left-behind adolescents (LBAs) are adolescents aged 11-18 years who are separated from their parents and left behind in local cities by one or both parents for a period of more than 6 months. LBAs in rural areas are likely to engage in aggressive behavior, which can affect interpersonal relationships, reduce academic performance, and even lead to anxiety and depression. To our knowledge, no studies have examined the mediating effect of resilience and self-esteem on the relationship between negative life events and aggression among Chinese rural LBAs. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the relationship between negative life events and aggression among Chinese rural LBAs and how self-esteem and resilience mediate the association.
METHODS
Using a stratified random sampling method, 1344 LBAs in Hunan Province of China were investigated. Information was collected by a self-designed sociodemographic questionnaire, Adolescent Self-Rating Life Events Checklist, Resilience Scale Chinese Adolescent, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and Aggression Scales to assess the psychology of LBAs. Data analysis was conducted using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and regression analysis to estimate direct and indirect effects using bootstrap analysis.
RESULTS
Negative life events were significantly related to self-esteem (r = - 0.338), resilience (r = - 0.359), and aggression (r = 0.441). Aggression was directly affected by self-esteem (β = - 0.44) and resilience (β = - 0.34). Negative life events were not only directly related to aggression (β = 0.34, 95% CI: 0.275 ~ 0.398) but also showed an indirect effect on aggression through self-esteem and resilience. The direct effect, total effect and indirect effect of negative life events on aggression through self-esteem and resilience were 0.3364, 0.4344 and 0.0980, respectively. The mediating effect of self-esteem and resilience accounted for 22.56% of the relationship between negative life events and aggression.
CONCLUSIONS
We found that self-esteem and resilience mediated most negative life events on aggression. It is imperative for educators and families to improve LBAs' self-esteem and resilience to reduce the occurrence of aggression. Future intervention studies should be designed to strengthen self-esteem and resilience.
Topics: Adolescent; Humans; Aggression; Anxiety; China; East Asian People; Interpersonal Relations; Self Concept; Surveys and Questionnaires; Adolescent Behavior; Life Change Events; Resilience, Psychological
PubMed: 36922776
DOI: 10.1186/s12888-023-04587-1