A Research On The Relationships Between Children And Adolescents' Values, Moral Judgement About Aggression And Aggression

Aggression is a significant issue in research of the developmental psychology. Due to the detrimental results of the aggressive behavior for others and people themselves, a large number of psychological researchers have been engaging in the study about aggression. With the development of experimental psychology and cognitive science, people have used cognitive process to explain human behavior, which becomes an important direction of psychology. Since 1980s, researchers have began to emphasize the study of cognitive mechanism of aggression. Former studies investigate cognitive mechanism of aggression from social information model and theory of mind. Aggression scholars have recently proposed that researchers should explore whether children's values and moral understanding are associated with aggressive behavior. Values express people's needs, which activate people's behavior. Values serve as guiding principles in people's lives, as criteria they use to select and justify actions and to evaluate people and events. In addition, some studies showed there was a relationship between moral judgement and moral behavior. But little studies investigate the relationships between children and adolescents'values,moral judgement about physical and relational aggression and aggression. So the purpose of this study is to compensate for the lack of domestic research. On the basis of exploring the characteristics of values and moral judgement of children and adolescents, this study further reveal the relationships the relationships between children and adolescents'values, moral judgement about aggression and aggression. This study was expected to explore cognitive basis of aggression, which provided psychological basis for intervention of aggression.1085 children and adolescents were selected from 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th in a primary school and junior middle school as the objectives in our research. Schwartz's value questionnaire(Chinese version), Murray- close's moral judgement questionnaire and peer nomination measure were used to investigate children and adolescents. Conclusions are as follows:1 significant sex differences emerged in level of physical aggression of primary school students, and no significant sex differences emerged in level of relational aggression. Significant sex differences emerged in level of physical and relational aggression of junior students.2 There were significant age difference and sex difference in level of power, universalism. The level of power of junior students was significantly higher than primary school students, and the level of universalism of junior students was significantly lower than primary school students. Boys showed higher level of power value and lower level of universalism value than girls.3 There are significant age difference and sex difference in level of moral judgements about aggression. Wrongness rating of physical aggression of junior students was significantly lower than primary school student. Girls judged physical and relational aggression more wrong than boys, and reported higher levels of harm resulting from aggressive behaviors than boys.4 Power value of primary school students and junior students was significantly positively related with physical and relational aggression. Universalism value of primary school students and junior students was significantly negatively related with physical and relational aggression. Wrongness and harmfulness of judgements about physical aggression significantly related physical aggression, and wrongness and harmfulness of judgements about relational aggression significantly related relational aggression.5 Wrongness judgement about physical and relational aggression of primary school students and junior students have mediating influence on the relationship between values and aggression.