Reactive and Proactive Aggression in School Children and Psychiatrically Impaired Chronically Assaultive Youth

• Published in: Journal of abnormal psychology (1965) Vol. 106; no. 1; pp. 37 - 51
• Main Authors: Dodge, Kenneth A, Lochman, John E, Harnish, Jennifer D, Bates, John E, Pettit, Gregory S
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Psychological Association 01-02-1997
• Subjects: Adolescent; Aggression - classification; Aggressive Behavior; Aggressive young children; Aggressiveness; Analysis of Variance; Assaults; Behavior disorders; Biological and medical sciences; Characteristics; Chi-Square Distribution; Child; Child clinical studies; Child Development; Childhood Development; Children & youth; Cohort Studies; Cross-Sectional Studies; Discriminant Analysis; Emotional Adjustment; Female; Human; Humans; Interpersonal Relations; Male; Medical sciences; Mental Disorders - complications; Psychodiagnostic Typologies; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Self Concept; Social behavior disorders; Social Cognition; Social psychology; Subtypes; Violence - classification; Human; Concomitant disease; School age; Violence; Mental disorder; Typology; Child; Social behavior disorder; Aggressiveness
• ISSN: 0021-843X; 2769-7541; 1939-1846; 2769-755X
• DOI: 10.1037/0021-843X.106.1.37

The authors proposed that reactively aggressive and proactively aggressive types of antisocial youth would differ in developmental histories, concurrent adjustment, and social information-processing patterns. In Study 1, 585 boys and girls classified into groups called reactive aggressive, proactive aggressive, pervasively aggressive (combined type), and nonaggressive revealed distinct profiles. Only the reactive aggressive groups demonstrated histories of physical abuse and early onset of problems, adjustment problems in peer relations, and inadequate encoding and problem-solving processing patterns. Only the proactive aggressive groups demonstrated a processing pattern of anticipating positive outcomes for aggressing. In Study 2, 50 psychiatrically impaired chronically violent boys classified as reactively violent or proactively violent demonstrated differences in age of onset of problem behavior, adjustment problems, and processing problems.