Firearm injury is a significant public health concern among youth living in the United States. Youth with exposure to violence (ETV) are more susceptible to carrying and using a firearm. Few researchers, however, have examined psychological mechanisms undergirding the association between ETV and firearm aggression. Retaliatory attitudes have been…

Background: A link between aggression and disciplinary actions has been established; however, specific associations between reactive and proactive functions of aggression and disciplinary actions in the elementary school setting have not been evaluated. A better understanding of links between functions of aggression and disciplinary actions could…

In a previous study, reactive criminal thinking or cognitive impulsivity mediated the relationship between parental knowledge and delinquency. This study sought to determine whether cognitive impulsivity also mediated the relationship between parental knowledge and childhood aggression. A path analysis was performed on a sample of 438 early…

This study examined associations between physical and relational forms of aggression and victimization and risk for willingness to engage in substance use and actual use in a sample of 231 (50% male) second- through fourth-grade students (mean age = 8.3 years). Physical aggression was more strongly associated with risk for substance use outcomes…

This study examined the reciprocal longitudinal relations between homophobic attitudes and homophobic bullying at school. Furthermore, the study also assessed the roles of exposure to homophobic bullying at school, homophobic language at home, and previous social interaction with individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender…

This article examines possible causal linkages between moral neutralization--a generic term for the related concepts of neutralization techniques, moral disengagement, and self-serving cognitive distortions--and aggressive behavior by using a set of repeated measures in a culturally diverse urban sample at ages 11.4 and 13.7 (N = 1,032). First,…

Youth aggression is a serious global issue, but research identifying personality traits associated with aggression has focused on adults. Little is known about whether similar associations exist during adolescence; even less is known about these associations across cultures. This study examined links between personality and physical aggression in…

Research Findings: This study investigated the long-term interrelations among children's language competencies, their home literacy environment (HLE), and 3 aspects of socioemotional development from ages 3 to 8, controlling for characteristics of the child and family. For this sample of 547 typically developing German children, parents and…

Background: The role of reactive aggression in the development of peer victimization remains unclear due in part to a failure to account for confounding problems of behavioural undercontrol (e.g., hyperactivity). As well, the school social context has rarely been examined to see whether these risks are mediated by relationships with teachers.…

This study examined a sample of adolescent online game players and explored the relationships between their gender, preference for video games (VG), hostility, aggressive behavior, experiences of cyberbullying, and victimization. The path relationships among the variables were further validated with structure equation modeling. Among the…

Background: There is substantial evidence to suggest that aggressive behavior is associated with poor academic performance in school-aged children. However, less is known about how different subtypes of aggression are related to academic performance and what variables may account for this association. Objective: The current study examined unique…

Threat appraisals--individuals' perceptions of how stressful situations may threaten their well-being--are an important but understudied mechanism that could explain links between peer victimization and adjustment. The goal of the present study was to examine relationships between physical and relational victimization by peers, threats to the…

This study examined mother-adolescent conflict as a mediator of longitudinal reciprocal relations between adolescent aggression and depressive symptoms and maternal psychological control. Motivated by family systems theory and the transactions that occur between individual and dyadic levels of the family system, we examined the connections among…

The current study involved a short-term longitudinal study of young children (M = 44.56 months, SD = 11.88, N = 103) to test the prospective associations between peer victimization and aggression subtypes. Path analyses documented that teacher-reported physical victimization was uniquely associated with increases in observed physical aggression…

Adolescent mothers and their children are particularly susceptible to witnessing or directly experiencing violence. Such violence exposure predicts maternal distress, parenting, and child behavior problems. The current study examined how mothers' depressive symptoms, aggression, harsh disciplinary practices, and home environment independently…