Mandy Grumm

Predicting aggressive behavior in children with the help of measures of implicit and explicit aggression

Aggressive behavior between children in schools is a topic that receives much interest as violence and aggressive behavior cause many maladaptive social outcomes in the school setting. In the current study the Implicit Association Test (IAT) was adapted as a measure of children’s implicit aggression, by assessing the association of the self category (vs. other) with the attribute concept of aggressive (vs. peaceful). In addition to the IAT, a questionnaire measure to assess explicit aggression was utilized. The main goal of the present contribution was to examine the predictive validity of measures of implicit as well as explicit aggression in predicting the scores in a competitive computer game as an indicator of children’s aggressive behavior. Taken together, the results indicated that measures of implicit and explicit aggression could serve as reliable predictors of children’s aggressive behavior and that the IAT possesses incremental validity in addition to the self-report measure.

Is Contact with People with Disabilities a Guarantee for Positive Implicit and Explicit Attitudes

In the past 50 years research on attitudes toward people with disabilities has repeatedly revealed negative attitudes by predominantly using self-report measures. The main aim of the present contribution was to develop an Implicit Association Test (IAT) to assess implicit attitudes toward people with disabilities. For this purpose 47 university students majoring in special education (11 male, 36 female) were asked to complete the IAT in addition to self-reported explicit attitudes (affective, cognitive, and behavioural component). Moreover, the students were asked about the amount and perceived quality of their contact experience with people with disabilities. Results showed that participants reported on average most negative explicit attitudes in the affective, followed by the cognitive and the behavioural component. On average, students were more likely to associate the category ‘disabled’ with the attribute ‘unpleasant’ on the IAT. Overall, explicit and implicit attitudes were only weakly correlated. The amount of contact significantly predicted the three components of explicit attitudes, but not implicit attitudes. The results and limitations of this study will be discussed with respect to their implications for the educational context.

Correlates of teachers’ ways of handling bullying:

Aggressive behaviors in schools and bullying behaviors amongst children are a serious problem in the school context. As a consequence of an aggressive atmosphere in the classroom, learning processes are disturbed and children are less likely to experience pleasure when attending school. Teachers face a big challenge as a result. As we know from previous research, teachers have different possibilities when handling incidents of aggressive behaviors and bullying in their classrooms. The present study sought to examine correlates (e.g. attitudes toward aggression) of ways of handling bullying in German teachers. Factor analysis indicated a two-factor solution with respect to ways of handling bullying (Factor 1: Ignoring vs. Taking Action, Factor 2: Attribution of Responsibility) and it was demonstrated that attitudes toward aggression and beliefs about the changeability of aggressive behaviors are correlates of the different strategies that teachers use. The implications for the school context and for teacher preparation are discussed.

Measuring acceptance of prevention programmes in children

The present paper describes the development of a scale to measure social validity in elementary-school children. A standardized assessment of childrens opinions about prevention programmes can be helpful in ensuring successful implementation and effectiveness. The results show that the scale consists of three factors: importance of goals, importance of effects and appropriateness of methods. Correlations with parental reports as well as gender differences were analysed. It can be concluded that measuring social validity with the newly developed scale can help researchers in the field of developmental psychology to tailor prevention programmes to the target group.