Thirteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

Children’s aggressive behavior is a major problem in our society and in our schools. Aggressive children display lower levels of academic achievement, are more likely to engage in other types of deviant behavior, and more likely to drop out of school. Understanding the mechanisms through which aggressive behavior is generated can help us create interventions aimed at reducing aggression in children. This study examines the mechanisms that drive aggressive behavior in school-age children. We are particularly interested in examining the relationship among different types of aggressive behaviors (physical and relational, proactive and reactive) and children’s empathy and self-control. Seventy middle-school children from a rural school located in the Southeastern United States participated in the study. Students completed a series of self-report measures including measures in social skills and aggressive behavior. We hypothesized that children who displayed higher levels of aggressive behavior (both physical and relational) would display lower levels of empathy and self-control. Our findings offered support to our hypothesis. More specifically, we found that children’s aggressive behaviors (proactive physical, reactive physical, proactive relational, reactive relational) were negatively correlated with children’s empathy and self-control. Our findings suggest that one of the mechanisms through which we could reduce the levels of both physical and relational aggression in children is to teach children empathy and self-control skills.