The social cognitions associated with relational aggression and depression in preadolescent girls

Relational aggression and depression in childhood have recently become important concerns for investigations on social maladjustment. Both relational aggression and depression have been linked to social maladjustment, peer rejection, and adjustment problems later in life. The relationships between overt aggression and depression and social maladjustment have led some investigators to attempt to understand the mechanisms that promote and maintain aggressive and depressed behaviors in the peer group (Crick & Dodge, 1994). One of the most extensive and empirically validated of the social cognitive theories applied to childhood problems is Dodge's social information-processing theory. Although most of the research utilizing Dodge's model has focused on overt aggression, recent investigations have supported its applicability to depression. Overall, these investigations suggest that both aggressive and depressed children show biases and deficits in the way they process information, but that their biases and deficits are generally specific to their symptom pattern, despite some overlap (Dodge, 1993; Quiggle et al., 1992).;The present study investigated the relationship between relational aggression and depression and specific steps of Crick and Dodge's (1994) reformulated social information processing model (depressogenic and intent attributions and response generation) in preadolescent girls. A total of 125 fourth, fifth, and sixth grade girls completed peer nominations of relational aggression and self-reports of depression. Girls also responded to hypothetical situations that involved peer group entry failure and ambiguous relational provocations and answered a series of questions designed to assess their depressogenic attributions, hostile intent attributions, and response generation in those situations.;Results revealed that depression significantly predicted hostile attribution bias and a depressogenic explanatory style in response to both relational provocation situations and entry failure situations. Depression did not significantly predict the generation of passive/withdrawn responses across situations. Relational aggression was not a significant predictor of depressogenic attributions, hostile intent attributions, or response generation. No relationship was found between depression and relational aggression and none of the results revealed significant interactions between depression and relational aggression. Taken together these findings suggest that steps 2 and 4 of Crick and Dodge's (1994) reformulated social information-processing model may be less relevant for relational aggression than for overt aggression and depression.