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Peer groups are critical socialization agents for the development of social behavior in adolescence, but studies examining peer-group effects on individuals' prosocial behavior are scarce. Using a two-wave, multilevel data set (N = 16,893, 8481 male; 8412 female; mean age at Time 1: 14.0 years) from 1308 classes in 252 secondary schools in Germany, main effects of the classroom level of prosocial behavior, cross-level interactions between the classroom and the individual levels of prosocial behavior at Time 1, and the moderating role of gender were examined. The results showed that adolescents in classrooms with high collective levels of prosocial behavior at Time 1 reported more prosocial behavior at Time 2, about two years later, reflecting a class-level main effect. A significant cross-level interaction indicated that a high classroom level of prosocial behavior particularly affected individuals with lower levels of prosocial behavior at Time 1. The influence of same-gender peers was larger compared with opposite-gender peers. The findings are discussed with respect to social learning mechanisms in the development of prosocial behavior and their implications for interventions to promote prosocial behavior.
The Girls Set the Tone: Gendered Classroom Norms and the Development of Aggression in Adolescence
(2015)
In a four-wave longitudinal study with N = 1,321 adolescents in Germany, we examined the impact of class-level normative beliefs about aggression on aggressive norms and behavior at the individual level over the course of 3 years. At each data wave, participants indicated their normative acceptance of aggressive behavior and provided self-reports of physical and relational aggression. Multilevel analyses revealed significant cross-level interactions between class-level and individual-level normative beliefs at T1 on individual differences in physical aggression at T2, and the indirect interactive effects were significant up to T4. Normative approval of aggression at the class level, especially girls' normative beliefs, defined the boundary conditions for the expression of individual differences in aggressive norms and their impact on physically and relationally aggressive behavior for both girls and boys. The findings demonstrate the moderating effect of social norms on the pathways from individual normative beliefs to aggressive behavior in adolescence.
When playing violent video games, aggressive actions are performed against the background of an originally neutral environment, and associations are formed between cues related to violence and contextual features. This experiment examined the hypothesis that neutral contextual features of a virtual environment become associated with aggressive meaning and acquire the function of primes for aggressive cognitions. Seventy-six participants were assigned to one of two violent video game conditions that varied in context (ship vs. city environment) or a control condition. Afterwards, they completed a Lexical Decision Task to measure the accessibility of aggressive cognitions in which they were primed either with ship-related or city-related words. As predicted, participants who had played the violent game in the ship environment had shorter reaction times for aggressive words following the ship primes than the city primes, whereas participants in the city condition responded faster to the aggressive words following the city primes compared to the ship primes. No parallel effect was observed for the non-aggressive targets. The findings indicate that the associations between violent and neutral cognitions learned during violent game play facilitate the accessibility of aggressive cognitions.
The girls set the tone
(2015)
In a four-wave longitudinal study with N = 1,321 adolescents in Germany, we examined the impact of class-level normative beliefs about aggression on aggressive norms and behavior at the individual level over the course of 3 years. At each data wave, participants indicated their normative acceptance of aggressive behavior and provided self-reports of physical and relational aggression. Multilevel analyses revealed significant cross-level interactions between class-level and individual-level normative beliefs at T1 on individual differences in physical aggression at T2, and the indirect interactive effects were significant up to T4. Normative approval of aggression at the class level, especially girls’ normative beliefs, defined the boundary conditions for the expression of individual differences in aggressive norms and their impact on physically and relationally aggressive behavior for both girls and boys. The findings demonstrate the moderating effect of social norms on the pathways from individual normative beliefs to aggressive behavior in adolescence.
A quasi-experimental study with N = 293 participants studying toward a teaching degree examined the efficacy of the intervention program "Strengthened for the teaching profession". In a pre-, intermediate- and post-test control group design, three treatment conditions that focused (1) on their individual professional strengths, (2) professional weaknesses, or (3) a combination of strengths and weaknesses were compared to a no-treatment control condition. Both at intermediate test and at posttest, students in the three intervention conditions scored higher than students in the control group on measures of self-efficacy and professional self-regulation. The combined intervention condition was more successful at promoting professional self-efficacy and self-regulation than the intervention focusing either on strengths or relative weaknesses only. The implications of the findings for teacher training are discussed.
Despite the increased attention devoted to sexual aggression among college students in the international research literature, Brazil has no systematic studies on the prevalence of sexual aggression in college populations. The present research measured the prevalence of sexual aggression and victimization since age 14 among 742 first-year college students in Brazil (411 women). A Portuguese version of the Short Form of the Sexual Experiences Survey (Koss et al., 2007) was administered to collect information from men and women as both victims and perpetrators of sexual aggression. The overall prevalence rate of victimization was 27% among men and 29% among women. Except for sexual coercion and attempted sexual coercion, there were no significant gender differences in victimization rates concerning nonconsensual sexual acts and aggressive strategies. In contrast, perpetration rates were significantly higher among men (33.7%) than among women (3%). The findings challenge societal beliefs that men are unlikely to be sexually coerced. Explanations are proposed for the disparity between male victimization and female perpetration rates based on traditional gender roles in Brazil.
(1) Background: Sexual violence (SV) is a major public health problem, with negative socio-economic, physical, mental, sexual, and reproductive health consequences. Migrants, applicants for international protection, and refugees (MARs) are vulnerable to SV. Since many European countries are seeing high migratory pressure, the development of prevention strategies and care paths focusing on victimised MARs is highly needed. To this end, this study reviews evidence on the prevalence of SV among MAR groups in Europe and the challenges encountered in research on this topic. (2) Methods: A critical interpretive synthesis of 25 peer-reviewed academic studies and 22 relevant grey literature documents was conducted based on a socio-ecological model. (3) Results: Evidence shows that SV is highly frequent in MARs in Europe, yet comparison with other groups is still difficult. Methodologically and ethically sound representative studies comparing between populations are still lacking. Challenges in researching SV in MARs are located at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, community, societal, and policy levels. (4) Conclusions: Future research should start with a clear definition of the concerned population and acts of SV to generate comparable data. Participatory qualitative research approaches could be applied to better grasp the complexity of interplaying determinants of SV in MARs.
Objective:
We present a review of peer-reviewed English-language studies conducted outside the United States and Canada on the prevalence of sexual assault victimization in adolescence and adulthood published since 2010.
Method:
A systematic literature search yielded 32 articles reporting on 45 studies from 29 countries. Studies that only provided prevalence estimates for sexual assault in intimate relationships or did not present separate rates for men and women were excluded. All studies were coded by two coders, and a risk of bias score was calculated for each study. Both past-year and prevalence rates covering longer periods were extracted.
Results:
The largest number of studies came from Europe (n = 21), followed by Africa (n = 11), Asia, and Latin America (n = 6 each). One study came from the Middle East and no studies were found from Oceania. Across the 22 studies that reported past-year prevalence rates, figures ranged from 0% to 59.2% for women, 0.3% to 55.5% for men, and 1.5% to 18.2% for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) samples. The average risk of bias score was 5.7 out of 10. Studies varied widely in methodology.
Conclusion:
Despite regional variation, most studies indicate that sexual assault is widespread. More sustained, systematic, and coordinated research efforts are needed to gauge the scale of sexual assault in different parts of the world and to develop prevention measures.
Aggression Replacement Training (ART) is a multimodal intervention for chronically aggressive youth. The program has been frequently administered in a variety of samples in the original form or in modified versions. This review examines evaluations of the efficacy of ART on aggressive behavior and secondary outcomes in children and youth, including modifications of ART and evaluations of the original version not covered by earlier reviews. Method: Scholarly databases were searched to identify 10 articles reporting 11 independent studies evaluating the efficacy ART in reducing aggressive behavior and improving anger control, social skills, and moral reasoning in children and youth. Results: The majority of studies found positive effects of ART on aggression and other outcomes related to anger control, social skills, and moral reasoning. However, most studies were based on small samples, and few included a control group to evaluate intervention success. Conclusions: The studies reviewed in this paper tentatively suggest that ART is an efficacious intervention to reduce aggressive behavior and improve anger control, social skills, and moral reasoning in at-risk children and youth. However, this conclusion is qualified by a number of methodological limitations that highlight the need for further, more rigorous evaluation studies.