| Aggressive behavior in the schools can have many negative consequences for schools, teachers, the aggressors, and the victims. Teachers have a strong influence on the classroom environment, and their behaviors and beliefs may determine whether or not they intervene in aggressive acts. Because of their beliefs, emotional responses, and personalities, teachers may take some aggressive acts more seriously than others. A teacher's beliefs about specific types of aggressive behaviors may affect their rate of intervention. Two important types of aggression are physical and social aggression. Social aggression has the aim of damaging social status, or friendships. This research examined how individual differences such as empathy and the Big Five personality traits relate to teachers' attitudes regarding physical and social aggression. Teachers completed a detailed measure of their perceptions of physical and social aggression, and questionnaires to assess individual differences. Analyses examined relations between the individual differences of teachers and their views on aggression to see whether specific individual differences relate to teachers reporting higher intervention rates for more subtle forms of aggression. Teachers rated physical aggression as more hurtful than social aggression, but recognized the hurtfulness of both types of aggression. Teachers reported higher awareness and intervention rates for acts of physical aggression as compared to acts of social aggression. Greater teacher empathy in the form of perspective taking was associated with a teacher's greater awareness of social aggression. Greater openness on the part of the teacher, as measured by the Big Five personality inventory, was significantly associated with a greater propensity to stop acts of physical aggression by students, and feelings of effectiveness in stopping students' physical aggression. |
