The Natural History and Developmental Functions of Aggression

Abstract

(from the chapter) The apparent ease of classification of aggressive acts according to social norms belies the complexity of the judgmental processes, including the ability of observers to take into account the current context and history of relationship, to assess the motivation of the actors, and to judge whether the nature and intensity of acts are justified by antecedents. The data now available seriously challenge the assumption that aggression is a unitary and psychopathological disposition. Significant advances have been achieved over the past half-century in defining the empirical links between childhood adaptation and later psychopathology. The basic empirical generalizations derived from these longitudinal investigations are basically congruent with the empirical generalizations that have been demonstrated in comparative investigations. The predictive validity of childhood measures of aggressive patterns seems to depend upon the configurations in which they occur. Social networks are essential for the deployment of indirect or "social aggression" strategies in late childhood. In general, measures of childhood problems overpredict subsequent adolescent and adult psychopathology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)