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Keeping Quiet Just Wouldn’t be Right: Children’s and Adolescents’ Evaluations of Challenges to Peer Relational and Physical Aggression

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Abstract

Youth peer groups hold many different types of norms, including norms supporting aggressive behavior. Challenging or standing up to such aggressive norms can be difficult for children and adolescents, given the pressures to conform to groups. In the current study, the relationship between individual judgments and expectations of the judgments of a peer group about the acceptability of challenging aggressive group norms was investigated. The sample included 9–10 and 13–14 year-olds (N = 292, 52.4 % female). Participants evaluated groups with norms condoning physical and relational aggression. Participants were more supportive of challenges to relational aggression than challenges to physical aggression. Additionally, age-related differences were found, with younger children perceiving challenges to group norms as more feasible than did adolescents. Participants individually rated challenging aggressive norms as okay, but thought that groups would be much less supportive of such challenges. The results also documented the influence of gender stereotypes about aggressive behavior on children’s and adolescents’ evaluations.

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Acknowledgments

The first author was supported by the Elizabeth M. Koppitz Fellowship from the American Psychological Foundation and by the Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship from the Graduate School at the University of Maryland during the execution of this study. The first author thanks Jude Cassidy, Geetha Ramani, Meredith Rowe and Kenneth Rubin, who provided helpful feedback regarding the dissertation project which served as the basis for this study. We thank Shelby Cooley, Laura Elenbaas, Aline Hitti, Michael T. Rizzo, Jeeyoung Noh and Hannah Beissert for their feedback and research assistance on this project. We thank the undergraduate research assistants Jamie Ott, Kaye Schacter, Hillary Johnson, Sarah Mealy and Ashley Johnson for help with data entry. We are grateful to the students, parents, and teachers who participated in this study.

Author Contributions

KL.M. and M.K. designed the study, and drafted the manuscript. K.L.M. conducted the data collection and analyses. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Educational Studies, University of South Carolina, 129 Wardlaw, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA

    Kelly Lynn Mulvey

  2. Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Melanie Killen

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  1. Kelly Lynn Mulvey
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Correspondence to Kelly Lynn Mulvey.

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This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Maryland.

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All participants assented to participation. Children’s parents provided signed informed parental consent and adolescents’ parents provided passive informed parental consent.

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Mulvey, K.L., Killen, M. Keeping Quiet Just Wouldn’t be Right: Children’s and Adolescents’ Evaluations of Challenges to Peer Relational and Physical Aggression. J Youth Adolescence 45, 1824–1835 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-016-0437-y

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