This paper reviews critical issues in the assessment and modification of children's social competence and reports on preliminary data collected in a longitudinal study of children's social behavior. A number of unanswered applied research questions concerning assessment and modification of social competence are noted: (1) Specific behaviors of…

The report summarizes recent and ongoing research on processes involved in the development of antisocial behavior disorders in children and adolescents. Studies address both the applied problem of preventing aggressive behavior and the overall relation of cognition to social behavior. A social information processing model of social competence is…

While evidence is mixed about whether aggressive children generate fewer alternative solutions to social problems than do nonaggressive children, research has found consistent deficiencies in the qualitative kinds of solutions that aggressive children produce. This study assessed salience effects on the abilities of aggressive and nonaggressive…

The conference reported in this document consisted of three symposia and eight workshops each concerned with a different area of violence in America. The document includes an introduction by Annette Zimmern Reed and opening remarks by Dallas mayor Starke Taylor and his wife, Carolyn Taylor. Information from the three symposia is given in the areas…

Dion, Berscheid, and Walster (1972) coined the phrase "what is beautiful is good" to describe an apparent stereotype in which attractive individuals are viewed more positively than less attractive individuals on a number of characteristics. The present study was an attempt to understand the ramifications of the "beauty-is-good"…

Is it possible that what is perceived as self-assertion in a man is perceived as aggression in a woman? These studies investigate whether (a) consciously feminist women place a greater than average importance on the value of equality and whether (b) women's approval for self-assertion in themselves and others interacts with their feminist…

In this investigation of children's unacceptable classroom behaviors and how teachers deal with them 114 female K-3 grade teachers with three or more years of classroom experience were asked: (1) to list and describe in descending order no more than three behaviors each perceived to be most unacceptable in the classroom (only those behaviors…

Aggression scores were obtained from 132 preadolescent inner city males to test the hypothesis that paternal absence may lead to both increased and decreased aggression. The subjects were 55 black, 25 Puerto Rican, and 52 white males between the ages of 9 and 13. They attended elementary public schools in Newark, New Jersey. A statistically…

This paper concerns early social adaptational and family antecedents of teenage delinquent behavior in a population of black first graders who were reassessed 10 years after the initial study. Subjects were 705 teenagers who had participated in the 1966-67 Woodlawn study and whose mothers had given permission for reassessment. At the time of the…

Early predictors of two major areas of teenage outcome -- substance use and psychiatric symptoms -- were analyzed and specific developmental paths leading to each teenage outcome were identified in this long-term, follow-up study. Substance "use" rather than "abuse" and psychiatric "symptoms" rather than…

The authoritarian-aggression attitudes of graduate education students were studied. Authoritarian-aggression is defined as the tendency to look for, condemn, reject, and punish people who violate conventional behavior. It was hypothesized that no significant differences in authoritarian-aggression attitudes exist between graduate students who…

In order to determine whether preschool children can successfully identify externalizing symptomatic behaviors (aggression and hyperactivity) in their male classmates, and whether children's perceptions are associated with peer-rated popularity and rejection, 154 preschool boys and girls were interviewed through the use of a peer-nominating…

One explanation for the positive relationship between alcohol consumption and violent crime considers alcohol consumption to be a socially accepted excuse for otherwise inappropriate behaviors. A policy capturing methodology was used to examine judgments of responsibility for rape. Male (N=30) and female (N=66) undergraduates received 40 profiles…

As part of a larger 1-year examination of the relationship between television viewing patterns and spontaneous play in nursery school, this study focuses on (1) the correlation between children's television viewing patterns in the home and their level of aggression in nursery school, and (2) specific factors within family settings that might…

The effects of counter-aggression strategies on married couples resulting from use of the Taylor interactive paradigm were investigated. Married persons (N=52) competed in a complex reaction time task and set durations of 100 decibel punitive noise for either their spouse or an opposite-sex stranger. During pretrials (aggression escalation), males…