Relationship Between Parental Psychological Control And Relational Aggression Among Middle School Students

In recent ye ars,there has been increased societal attention focused o n the problem of school bullying and other aggressive behaviors for its universality and harmfulness.Ho we ver,being an insidious form of bullying,relational aggression refers to covert behaviors,designed to harm others through exploitation of relationships,which are more likely to be ne glected by the public.Research has indicated that it is obviously related to the students' psychologic al maladjustment and may have a permanent damage on their physical and mental de velopment.Given the pre viously pro ved correlation between parental ps ychological control and relational aggression,it is still of great necessity to do more empirical research to explore the latent functioning process.In order to investigate the c haracteristics of parental ps ychological control?relational aggression and the relations hip between them,a sample of 502 middle school students was recruited in the study to complete Parental Psychological Co ntrol Scale?Relational Aggression Sc ale?State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and Interpersonal Reactivity Index-C.What's more,basing on the General Aggression Model and combining with the c haracteristics of trait anxiety and e mpathy,this study discussed the further relati onship amo ng these four factors and constructed a mo derated mediating model.The results indicate d that:(1)The status of middle school students' relational aggression is in lower degree,and only-child stude nts were significantly less relationally aggress ive than non-only-child students.Moreover,social exclusion,as one factor of relational aggression,it does exist significant difference in terms of grade and pare nts' education degree.Namely,compare d to the stude nts whose parents with junior high school education,other students whose parents with elementary sc hool education or e ven lo wer have an o bvio usly higher scores in social exclusion,and the scores of the students in grade one are also higher than that of grade two.(2)The parental psychological control of middle school students is in a status of lo wer de gree,and there is a statically significant ge nder difference,which me ans the boys demonstrate d higher scores in parental ps ychological control than girls.(3)There were positive correlation between parental psychological control and relational aggression,ho we ver,it was only the fathers' psychologic al control that c an positively predicted the relational aggression.(4)Trait anxiety played a partial mediating role between father's psychologic al control and relational aggression.(5)Empathy can moderate the mediated path through trait anxiety,that is to say,with students' empathy improving,the effect of trait anxiety on relational aggression increased.