Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to investigate how 3 types of aggressiveness (reactive-expressive, reactive-inexpressive, and proactive-relational) influence elementary school children's social information processing. Elementary school children (grades 4 to 6; N=1,482) completed a set of questionnaires consisting of the Proactive-Reaction Aggression Questionnaire (PRAQ-C) and an originally developed hypothetical conflict situation instrument assessing children's response evaluations and outcome expectations for each of the above types of aggressive responses. Compared to the ratings by the non-aggressive children, expressively and relationally aggressive responses were evaluated positively by the reactive-expressively and proactive-relationally aggressive children, respectively. Proactive-relationally aggressive children also evaluated expressively and inexpressively aggressive responses positively. Reactive-inexpressively aggressive children, however, did not evaluate inexpressively aggressive responses positively. Structural equation modeling was conducted to verify whether the children's aggressiveness causes their social information processing distortion. The results suggested that reactive-expressive and proactive-relational aggressiveness causes social information processing distortion in expressively and relationally aggressive children, respectively, and that the former also causes social information processing distortion in expressively and inexpressively aggressive responses. The importance of intervention with proactive-relationally aggressive children was discussed.
