The Relationship Between Parental Conflict, Peer Aggression And Adolescent Aggressive Behavior: The Regulatory Effect Of COMT Gene

It is of great significance to explore the influencing factors and mechanisms of adolescent aggression.It is one of scientific issues that researchers have been working on how genetic and environmental factors affect the individual development.With the rise of molecular genetics,it has become one of the most frontier topics on aggressive behavior to identify the candidate genes of aggression and the interaction between gene and environment.In spite of this,most of the existing researches are limited to discuss one aspect of gene or the environment.There is lacking systematic research on how genetic and interparental conflict or peer victimization affect adolescent aggression.So far,there have been neither studies examining the interaction impact between the interparental conflict involved two dimensions and COMT gene on adolescent aggression nor researches exploring the peer victimization involved three dimensions and COMT gene interaction effect.Therefore,this study attempts to base on the international frontier of aggression to explore the impact and mechanisms of genetic,interparental conflict and peer victimization on adolescent aggression from the perspective of the developmental behavioral genetics.We hope to deepen the scientific cognition of aggressive behavior and try to provide a theoretical basis for the identification and correction of adolescent aggression.In this study,we based on the gene-environment interaction design to exam the effect of the COMT gene and interparental conflict or peer victimization on adolescent aggression.What's more,selecting 551 students from a common junior high school in Dongguan as the participants in this test.And the participants were asked to assess their perception of interparental conflict,own peer victimization,and aggressive behavior by self-reported.After extracting the DNA samples of participants by collecting adolescent's saliva samples,the COMT gene was detected and typed via biotechnology company.On this basis,we investigated the impact of COMT gene rs737866 polymorphisms and interparental conflict or peer victimization on adolescent aggression,and the main conclusions were as follows:(1)There were significant positive correlations not only between interparentalconflict and adolescent aggression,but also between peer victimization and aggression.(2)There was no signification correlation between COMT gene and interparental conflict,neither its two dimensions.COMT gene had a significant correlation with peer victimization,involved physical victimization and verbal victimization,while TT genotype carriers had suffered more peer victimization.(3)The direct effect of the COMT gene on adolescents aggression was not significant.(4)The COMT gene had no significant moderating effect in the relationship between interparental conflict and adolescent aggression.(5)The moderating effect of COMT gene in the relationship between peer victimization and adolescent aggression was significant.Among them,the effect of peer victimization on aggression to C allele carriers had the stronger promotion effect.