Social decision making and aggressive behavior in adolescence

Sixth and seventh-grade adolescents (N = 172) were assessed across decision-making domains after recollecting an actual social provocation that had been personally experienced. While imagining themselves in their recollected experiences, participants responded to open-ended and multiple-choice questions about their decision making and behavioral responses. Questions were designed to represent multiple decision-making factors that are hypothesized to play a role in the development of aggressive behavior. Hypotheses were generated and tested in furtherance of a proposed theoretical model of response evaluation and decision (RED; Fontaine & Dodge, 2000). Findings supported the RED hypothesis that there are multiple, unique decision-making processes that are activated during social interactions that are related to the enactment and development of adolescent aggressive behavior. In addition, the cumulative effect of multiple processes on types of aggressive behavior was consistently stronger than effects observed at the bivariate level. Lastly, effects at bivariate and multivariate levels still held even controlling for demographic factors such as race and gender. These findings have implications for the design of interventions to help adolescents improve their decision-making skills.