Physical Aggression,Relationship Aggression And Adolescent Peer Relationship:Individual Orientation And Variable Orientation Study

Good peer relationship is very important for positive social development of adolescents.Aggression is an important factor influencing the development of adolescent peer relationships as a behavioral characteristic.However,there is some debate about the positive or negative impact of aggression in the development of adolescent peer relationships.The causes of these controversies may be related to different forms of aggression,different forms of co-occurring,and the relationship between aggression and peer relationships needs to be explored from a development perspective.Therefore,this study determines the co-occurring patterns of two types of aggression by latent profile analysis(LPA),analyzes the relationship between different aggression subgroups and peer relationships,and then constructs a cross-lagged model to investigate the dynamic bidirectional relationship between two types of aggression and peer relationships.Physical aggression(PA)and relational aggression(RA)are two major types of aggression.Both forms of aggression are associated with multiple psychosocial maladaptation for both attackers and victims,and has long been concerned by theoretical and empirical researchers.Researches demonstrated medium to high degree of correlation between PA and RA,indicating that PA and RA are co-occurring.The extant studies mainly employed latent class growth modelling to examine the associations between developmental trajectories of PA and RA,and provided insights for the co-occurring nature of PA and RA.However,these studies failed to reveal co-ocurring patterns of PA and RA,which is better to be identified based on their co-ocurring levels.Further,the c-ocurring patterns of PA and RA may demonstrate variation across ages and gender difference Thus,the broad aim of the present study was to identify the heterogenous co-ocurring patterns of PA and RAusing latent profile analysis(LPA),and their stability across ages.Then,we would also examine the associations between co-ocurring patterns with peer acceptance and rejection,by which to provide validity evidence for the co-ocurring patterns.We will also use a cross-lagged model to examine the relationship between physical aggression,relational aggression and peer rejection,acceptance,and popularity.A total of 1967 seven-grade(mean age 13.22 ± 0.36 years old,1018 male)students were investigated for three years.Children’s teachers reported their aggression on eight items of PA and six items of RA from a Chinese version of Child’s Social Behavior Questionnaire.A standardized peer-nomination procedure was used to collect information on children’s peer acceptance and rejection.The following results were found.(1)Physical aggression,relationship aggression,peer acceptance,peer rejection,and perceived popularity have high stability over time(stability coefficient rs = 0.44 to 0.76),There was a significant correlation between two types of aggression and peer adaptation indicators.(2)LPA analysis showed that there were 5 heterogeneous co-ocurring PA-RA patterns consistently identified at three time points,namely high PA-RA group,moderate PA-RA group,low-to-moderate PA-low RA group,low PA-low-to-moderate RA group,and low PA-RA group.Members of different co-ocurring PA-RA patterns showed varying cross-age stability.Adolescents in the low PA-RA group have highest stability,followed by the high PA-RA group,and the adolescents in the low PA-low-to-moderate RA group showed higher cross-age transition.(3)Boys are more likely to be in the high PA-RA group,moderate PA-RA group,and low-to-moderate PA and low RA group,girls are more likely to be in low PA-low-to-moderate RA group,and low PA-RA group;The gender-disaggregated subgroup results show that levels of physical and relational aggression always maintain similar in boy’s subgroups,while girls have subgroups with higher level of relational aggression than physical aggression.(4)Aggression subgroup and peer rejection,peer acceptance and popularity have links as shown that the high PA-RA group having the highest peer rejection level and the lowest peer acceptance,popularity level,while the low PA-RA group has the lowest peer rejection level and the highest level of popularity.The levelof peer rejection of moderate PA-RA group was significantly higher than the other groups except the high PA-RA group.The level of peer acceptance was significantly lower than the low PA-RA group,significantly higher than the high PA-RA group at T1 and T2,The group difference was not significant between moderate PA-RA group and the other twogroups.and the perceived popularity level was significantly higher than high PA-RA group and lower than the low PA-RA group,significantly lower than the low PA-low-to-moderate RA group at T1.(5)Cross-lagged modoel analysis shows that the relational aggression at T1 significantly predicts the peer rejection at T2,the peer rejection at T1 significantly predicts PA and RA at T2,the peer rejection at T2 significantly predicts the PA and RA at T3,and the link between the adolescent physical aggression relational aggression and the peer indicators have transgender and trans-age consistency.