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Relatedness strongly influences social behaviors in a wide variety of species. For most species, the highest typical degree of relatedness is between full siblings with 50% shared genes. However, this is poorly understood in species with unusually high relatedness between individuals: clonal organisms. Although there has been some investigation into clonal invertebrates and yeast, nothing is known about kin selection in clonal vertebrates. We show that a clonal fish, the Amazon molly (Poecilia formosa), can distinguish between different clonal lineages, associating with genetically identical, sister clones, and use multiple sensory modalities. Also, they scale their aggressive behaviors according to the relatedness to other females: they are more aggressive to non-related clones. Our results demonstrate that even in species with very small genetic differences between individuals, kin recognition can be adaptive. Their discriminatory abilities and regulation of costly behaviors provides a powerful example of natural selection in species with limited genetic diversity.
Crowdsourcing platforms provide an affordable approach for recruiting large and diverse samples in a short time. Past research has shown that researchers can obtain reliable data from these sources, at least in domains of research that are not affectively involving. The goal of the present study was to test if crowdsourcing platforms can also be used to conduct experiments that incorporate the induction of aversive affective states. First, a laboratory experiment with German university students was conducted in which a frustrating task induced anger and aggressive behavior. This experiment was then replicated online using five crowdsourcing samples. The results suggest that participants in the online samples reacted very similarly to the anger manipulation as participants in the laboratory experiments. However, effect sizes were smaller in crowdsourcing samples with non-German participants while a crowdsourcing sample with exclusively German participants yielded virtually the same effect size as in the laboratory.
Objective: This study examined the sustained efficacy of a media violence intervention in reducing media violence use, normative acceptance of aggression, and aggressive behavior in adolescents. It used an experimental design to evaluate the effects of the intervention over a period of 30 months. Method: N = 627 German 7th and 8th graders were assigned to a 5-week school-based intervention to reduce media violence use or to a no-intervention control group. Media violence use, normative acceptance of aggression, and aggressive behavior were measured 3 months before the intervention (T1), 7 months post intervention (T2), and at 2 follow-ups 18 (T3) and 30 (T4) months after the intervention. This article focuses on the findings from the 2 follow-ups. Results: Controlling for baseline levels and various demographic covariates, media violence use at T2, T3, and T4 and self-reported physical aggression at T3 were significantly lower in the intervention group, and the indirect path from the intervention to T3 aggression via T2 media violence use was significant. Lower T2 media violence use predicted lower T3 normative acceptance of aggression among participants with lower initial aggression. No effects on nonviolent media use and relational aggression were observed. Conclusion: The findings show that a short class-based intervention can produce lasting changes in media violence use that are linked to a decrease in aggression.
In this article, I examine the development of aggressive behavior from middle childhood to adolescence as a result of the interaction between the person and the environment and discuss implications for intervention measures. Three main questions are addressed and illustrated by examples from recent research: What are intrapersonal risk factors for the development and persistence of aggressive behavior from middle childhood to adolescence? What factors in the social environment contribute to the development of aggressive behavior? How do individual dispositions and environmental risk factors interact to explain developmental trajectories of aggressive behavior?
This commentary argues that, rather than providing an "exhaustive review," Elson and Ferguson (2013) discuss a selective sample of empirical studies on violent video game use which corroborate their claim that there is no systematic evidence for a link between violent video game play and aggression. In evaluating the evidence, the authors portray a biased picture of the current state of knowledge about media violence effects. They fail to distinguish between aggression and violence and between everyday and clinical forms of aggression. Furthermore, they misrepresent key constructs, such as mediation, moderation, and external validity, to discredit methodologies used to assess aggression and media violence use. The paper moves the debate backward rather than forward, falling behind existing meta-analytic studies that consider a much wider and more balanced range of studies.
Lean back and relax
(2018)
Frustration is a powerful instigator of anger-based aggression. We hypothesized that the impact of a frustration on anger and aggressive behavior is reduced in a state of feeling relaxed, which is considered incompatible with the experience of anger. Seventy-nine participants received frustrating feedback either when sitting upright or sitting in a reclined position and were then given a chance to act aggressively toward the frustrator. Feelings of anger and relaxation were assessed before and after the frustration. Participants in the reclined position felt more relaxed than those sitting upright, which indirectly predicted less aggressive behavior via lower anger. The results are consistent with theories of incompatible states and embodiment and have implications for using body-related cues to mitigate anger-based aggression.
BACKGROUND: Aggressive behavior at an early age is linked to a broad range of psychosocial problems in later life. That is why risk factors of the occurrence and the development of aggression have been examined for a long time in psychological science. The present doctoral dissertation aims to expand this research by investigating risk factors in three intrapersonal domains using the prominent social-information processing approach by Crick and Dodge (1994) as a framework model. Anger regulation was examined as an affective, theory of mind as a cognitive, and physical attractiveness as an appearance-related developmental factor of aggression in middle childhood. An additional goal of this work was to develop and validate a behavioral observation assessment of anger regulation as past research lacked in ecologically valid measures of anger regulation that are applicable for longitudinal studies.
METHODS: Three empirical studies address the aforementioned intrapersonal risk factors. In each study, data from the PIER-project were used, a three-wave-longitudinal study covering three years with a total sample size of 1,657 children in the age between 6 and 11 years (at the first measurement point). The central constructs were assessed via teacher-reports (aggression), behavioral observation (anger regulation), computer tests (theory of mind), and independent ratings (physical attractiveness). The predictive value of each proposed risk factor for the development of aggressive behavior was examined via structural equation modeling.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The newly developed behavioral observation measure was found to be a reliable and valid tool to assess anger regulation in middle childhood, but limited in capturing a full range of relevant regulation strategies. That might be the reason, why maladaptive anger regulation was not found to function as a risk factor of subsequent aggressive behavior. However, children’s deficits in theory of mind and a low level in physical attractiveness significantly predicted later aggression. Problematic peer relationships were identified as underlying the link between low attractiveness and aggression. Thus, fostering children’s skills in theory of mind and their ability to call existing beliefs about the nature of more versus less attractive individuals into question may be important starting points for the prevention of aggressive behavior in middle childhood.
Being surrounded by peers who are accepting of aggression is a significant predictor of the development and persistence of aggression in childhood and adolescence. Whereas past research has focused on social reinforcement mechanisms as the underlying processes, the present longitudinal study analysed the role of external control beliefs as an additional mediator explaining the link between peers’ acceptance of aggression and the development of aggressive behaviour. Drawing on a large community sample of N = 1,466 male and female children and adolescents from Germany aged between 10 and 18 years, results of latent structural equation modeling were consistent with the hypotheses that peer acceptance of aggression would predict external control beliefs in the social domain, which in turn, should predict aggressive behaviour over time. Additional multigroup analyses showed that the predicted pathways were consistent across gender and age groups.
Background: Aggression is a severe behavioral problem that interferes with many developmental challenges individuals face in middle childhood and adolescence. Particularly in the peer and in the academic domain, aggression inhibits the individual from making important learning experiences that are predictive for a healthy transition into adulthood. Furthermore, the resulting developmental deficits have the propensity to feedback and to promote aggression at later developmental stages. The aim of the present PhD thesis was to investigate pathways and processes involved in the etiology of aggression by examining the interrelation between multiple developmental problems in the peer and in the academic domain. More specifically, the relevance of affiliation with deviant peers as a driving mechanism for the development of aggression, factors promoting the affiliation with deviant peers (social rejection; academic failure), and mechanisms by which affiliation with deviant peers leads to aggression (external locus of control) were investigated.
Method: The research questions were addressed by three studies. Three data waves were available for the first study, the second and third study were based on two data waves. The first study specified pathways to antisocial behavior by investigating the temporal interrelation between social rejection, academic failure, and affiliation with deviant peers in a sample of 1,657 male and female children and adolescents aged between 6 and 15 years. The second study examined the role of external control beliefs as a potential mediator in the link between affiliation with deviant peers and aggression in a sample of 1,466 children and adolescents in the age of 9 to 19 years, employing a half-longitudinal design. The third study aimed to expand the findings of Study 1 and Study 2 by examining the differential predictivity of combinations of developmental risks for different functions of aggression, using a sample of 1,479 participants in the age between 9 and 19 years. First, profiles of social rejection, academic failure, and affiliation with deviant peers were identified, using latent profile analysis. Second, prospective pathways between risk-profiles and reactive and proactive aggression were investigated, using latent path analysis.
Results: The first study revealed that antisocial behavior at T1 was associated with social rejection and academic failure at T2. Both mechanisms promoted affiliation with deviant peers at the same data wave, which predicted deviancy at T3. Furthermore, both an indirect pathway via social rejection and affiliation with deviant peers and an indirect pathway via academic failure and affiliation with deviant peers significantly mediated the link between antisocial behavior at the first and the third data wave. Additionally, the proposed pathways generalized across genders and different age groups. The second study yielded that external control beliefs significantly mediated the link between affiliation with deviant peers and aggression, with affiliation with deviant peers at T1 predicting external control beliefs at T2 and external control beliefs at T1 predicting aggressive behavior at T2. Again, the analyses provided no evidence for gender and age specific variations in the proposed pathways. In the third study, three distinct risk groups were identified, made up of a large non-risk group, with low scores on all risk measures, a group characterized by high scores on social rejection (SR group), and a group with the highest scores on measures of affiliation with deviant peers and academic failure (APAF group). Importantly, risk group membership was differentially associated with reactive and proactive aggression. Only membership in the SR group at T1 was associated with the development of reactive aggression at T2 and only membership in the APAF group at T1 predicted proactive aggression at T2. Additionally, proactive aggression at T1 predicted membership in the APAF group at T2, indicating a reciprocal relationship between both constructs.
Conclusion: The results demonstrated that aggression causes severe behavioral deficits in social and academic domains which promote future aggression by increasing individuals’ tendency to affiliate with deviant peers. The stimulation of external control beliefs provides an explanation for deviant peers’ effect on the progression and intensification of aggression. Finally, multiple developmental risks were shown to co-occur within individuals and to be differentially predictive of reactive and proactive aggression. The findings of this doctoral dissertation have possible implications for the conceptualization of prevention and intervention programs aimed to reduce aggression in middle childhood and adolescence.
Early maternal care may counteract familial liability for psychopathology in the reward circuitry
(2018)
Reward processing is altered in various psychopathologies and has been shown to be susceptible to genetic and environmental influences. Here, we examined whether maternal care may buffer familial risk for psychiatric disorders in terms of reward processing. Functional magnetic resonance imaging during a monetary incentive delay task was acquired in participants of an epidemiological cohort study followed since birth (N = 172, 25 years). Early maternal stimulation was assessed during a standardized nursing/playing setting at the age of 3 months. Parental psychiatric disorders (familial risk) during childhood and the participants’ previous psychopathology were assessed by diagnostic interview. With high familial risk, higher maternal stimulation was related to increasing activation in the caudate head, the supplementary motor area, the cingulum and the middle frontal gyrus during reward anticipation, with the opposite pattern found in individuals with no familial risk. In contrast, higher maternal stimulation was associated with decreasing caudate head activity during reward delivery and reduced levels of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the high-risk group. Decreased caudate head activity during reward anticipation and increased activity during delivery were linked to ADHD. These findings provide evidence of a long-term association of early maternal stimulation on both adult neurobiological systems of reward underlying externalizing behavior and ADHD during development.