Citation

Thompson EL, Mehari KR, Farrell AD. Child Dev. 2019; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Affiliation

Virginia Commonwealth University.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/cdev.13242

PMID

30932183

Abstract

This study investigated reciprocal relations between adolescents' physical aggression and their perceptions of peers' deviant behaviors and attitudes. Analyses were conducted on four waves of data from 2,290 adolescents (ages 10-16) from three urban middle schools. Autoregression models revealed reciprocal relations between peer factors (i.e., friends' problem behavior, peer pressure for fighting, friends' support for fighting) and adolescents' reporting of their aggressive behavior. Bidirectional relations were also found between peer pressure for fighting and adolescents' frequency of physical aggression based on teacher ratings.

FINDINGS were consistent across sex, grade, and time.

FINDINGS suggest that multiple dimensions of peers' behaviors uniquely play a role in the development of adolescents' aggression and have important implications for interventions to reduce problem behaviors.

© 2019 Society for Research in Child Development.

Language: en