Reid Griffith Fontaine

Peer Rejection and Social Information-Processing Factors in the Development of Aggressive Behavior Problems in Children

The relation between social rejection and growth in antisocial behavior was investigated. In Study 1,259 boys and girls (34% African American) were followed from Grades 1 to 3 (ages 6-8 years) to Grades 5 to 7 (ages 10-12 years). Early peer rejection predicted growth in aggression. In Study 2,585 boys and girls (16% African American) were followed from kindergarten to Grade 3 (ages 5-8 years), and findings were replicated. Furthermore, early aggression moderated the effect of rejection, such that rejection exacerbated antisocial development only among children initially disposed toward aggression. In Study 3, social information-processing patterns measured in Study 1 were found to mediate partially the effect of early rejection on later aggression. In Study 4, processing patterns measured in Study 2 replicated the mediation effect. Findings are integrated into a recursive model of antisocial development.

Response Decision Processes and Externalizing Behavior Problems in Adolescents

Externalizing behavior problems of 124 adolescents were assessed across Grades 7-11. In Grade 9, participants were also assessed across social-cognitive domains after imagining themselves as the object of provocations portrayed in six videotaped vignettes. Participants responded to vignette-based questions representing multiple processes of the response decision step of social information processing. Phase 1 of our investigation supported a two-factor model of the response evaluation process of response decision (response valuation and outcome expectancy). Phase 2 showed significant relations between the set of these response decision processes, as well as response selection, measured in Grade 9 and (a) externalizing behavior in Grade 9 and (b) externalizing behavior in Grades 10-11, even after controlling externalizing behavior in Grades 7-8. These findings suggest that on-line behavioral judgments about aggression play a crucial role in the maintenance and growth of aggressive response tendencies in adolescence.

Disentangling the Psychology and Law of Instrumental and Reactive Subtypes of Aggression

Behavioral scientists have distinguished an instrumental (or proactive) style of aggression from a style that is reactive (or hostile). Whereas instrumental aggression is cold-blooded, deliberate, and goal driven, reactive aggression is characterized by hot blood, impulsivity, and uncontrollable rage. Scholars have pointed to the distinction between murder (committed with malice aforethought) and manslaughter (enacted in the heat of passion in response to provocation) in criminal law as a reflection of the instrumental‐reactive aggression dichotomy. Recently, B. J. Bushman and C. A. Anderson (2001) argued that the instrumental‐reactive aggression distinction has outlived its usefulness in psychology and pointed to inconsistencies and confusion in criminal law applications as support for their position. But how similar is the legal distinction between murder and manslaughter to the instrumental‐reactive aggression dichotomy in psychology? This article compares and contrasts the psychological and legal models and demonstrates that the purposes for distinguishing between instrumental and reactive aggression in psychology and law are undeniably different in meaningful ways. As such, a perceived shift in law away from differentiating murder and manslaughter has no bearing on the usefulness of the instrumental‐reactive aggression distinction in psychological science.

Social Information Processing and Cardiac Predictors of Adolescent Antisocial Behavior

The relations among social information processing (SIP), cardiac activity, and antisocial behavior were investigated in adolescents over a 3-year period (from ages 16 to 18) in a community sample of 585 (48% female, 17% African American) participants. Antisocial behavior was assessed in all 3 years. Cardiac and SIP measures were collected between the first and second behavioral assessments. Cardiac measures assessed resting heart rate (RHR) and heart rate reactivity (HRR) as participants imagined themselves being victimized in hypothetical provocation situations portrayed via video vignettes. The findings were moderated by gender and supported a multiprocess model in which antisocial behavior is a function of trait-like low RHR (for male individuals only) and deviant SIP. In addition, deviant SIP mediated the effects of elevated HRR reactivity and elevated RHR on antisocial behavior (for male and female participants).

The contribution of moral disengagement in mediating individual tendencies toward aggression and violence

This study examines the role of moral disengagement in fostering engagement in aggression and violence through adolescence to young adulthood in accordance with a design in which the study of individual differences and of their relations is instrumental to address underlying intraindividual structures and process conducive to detrimental conduct. Participants were 345 young adults (52% females) who were followed across 4 time periods (T1 M age = 17 years to T4 M age = 25 years). The longitudinal relations among irritability, hostile rumination, and moral disengagement attest to a conceptual model in which moral disengagement is crucial in giving access to action to aggressive tendencies. Findings suggest that irritability and hostile rumination contributed to the development of each other reciprocally and significantly across time. While hostile rumination and moral disengagement significantly mediated the relation between irritability and violence, moral disengagement significantly mediated the relation between hostile rumination and violence.

Individual differences in personality conducive to engagement in aggression and violence

This paper examined empirically the value of a conceptual model in which emotional stability and agreeableness contribute to engagement in aggression and violence (EAV) indirectly through irritability, hostile rumination and moral disengagement. Three hundred and forty young adults (130 male and 190 female) participated in the study. The average age of participants was 21 at time 1 and 25 at time 2. Findings attested to the role of basic traits (i.e. agreeableness and emotional stability) and specific personality dispositions (i.e. irritability and hostile rumination) in predisposing to EAV and to the pivotal role of moral disengagement in giving access to aggressive and violent conduct. In particular, the mediational model attested to the pivotal role of emotional stability and agreeableness in contributing directly to both hostile rumination and irritability and indirectly to moral disengagement, and to EAV. Agreeableness and hostile rumination contribute to moral disengagement that plays a key role in mediating the relations of all examined variables with EAV. Copyright

The mediating role of moral disengagement in the developmental course from peer rejection in adolescence to crime in early adulthood

Both peer relations problems and moral disengagement – the set of social-cognitive processes by which the moral content of an antisocial act is altered or removed so that the act may be more easily performed – have been repeatedly demonstrated to have a considerable impact on social development. Despite the fact that each has been found to be a reliable precursor to antisocial outcomes in youth, the relation of these two constructs in the emergence of criminal behavior has not been investigated. In the present study of 392 Italian youths, we investigated whether moral disengagement in late adolescence (16/18 years) mediates the relation between peer rejection in middle adolescence (14 years) and crime in early adulthood (18/20 years), controlling for aggressive conduct problems at age 14. Although peer rejection and aggression at age 14 did not directly affect criminal outcomes at age 18/20, we found that they indirectly impact the emergence of adult crime through moral disengagement in late adolescence (16/18 years). This finding is consistent with the theoretical position that the individual who is peer rejected and socially disfavored may, as a result of viewing the world as unfair and unjust, develop criminogenic judgment, and decision-making strategies (moral disengagement) that facilitate his or her pursuit of antisocial goals. Implications for intervention and rehabilitation, as well as directions for future research, are discussed.

Social Information Processing, Subtypes of Violence, and a Progressive Construction of Culpability and Punishment in Juvenile Justice

Consistent with core principles of liberal theories of punishment (including humane treatment of offenders, respecting offender rights, parsimony, penal proportionality, and rehabilitation), progressive frameworks have sought to expand doctrines of mitigation and excuse in order to reduce culpability and punishment. With respect to juvenile justice, scholars have proposed that doctrinal mitigation be broadened, and that adolescents, due to aspects of developmental immaturity (such as decision-making capacity), be punished less severely than adults who commit the same crimes. One model of adolescent antisocial behavior that may be useful to a progressive theory of punishment in juvenile justice distinguishes between instrumental violence, by which the actor behaves thoughtfully and calmly to achieve personal gain, and reactive violence, which is characterized as impulsive, emotional retaliation toward a perceived threat or injustice. In particular, social cognitive differences between instrumental and reactive violence have implications for responsibility, length and structure of incarceration, rehabilitation, and other issues that are central to a progressive theory of juvenile culpability and punishment.

The role of irritability in the relation between job stressors, emotional reactivity, and counterproductive work behaviour

Researchers have stressed the importance of assessing individual differences in personality as an approach to understanding aggressive and deviant conduct across different contexts. This study investigated the moderation role of irritability, a specific aggression-related disposition, in the process of work stressors that are conducive to counterproductive work behaviour (CWB) within the stressor–emotion model. From a total sample of 1147 Italian workers (53.5% women), high- and low-irritability groups were identified. Then, using a multigroup structural equations model, we simultaneously examined all the relations in both high- and low-irritability groups, and investigated whether these relations were different between them. Results showed that job stressors elicited negative emotions that, in turn, lead to CWB. Moreover, some job stressors influenced CWB directly only in the high-irritability group. Overall, irritability moderated the relation among job stressors and CWB but not the relation among job stressors and negative emotions, with the sole exception of role conflict. As well, irritability did not moderate the relation between emotion and CWB. Thus, high-irritability employees may be more prone to react aggressively to job stressors via multiple functioning paths. The principal differences between low- and high-irritability individuals could be how they manage the impact of perceived stressors on emotions and behaviour.