Good friendships, bad friends: Friendship factors as moderators of the relation between aggression and social information processing

Abstract

The primary objective was to examine whether the associations between aggression and social information processing was moderated by friendship quality and the aggressiveness of the best friend. Drawn from a larger normative sample of 5th and 6th graders, 385 children (180 boys) completed questionnaires pertaining to friendship quality and social information processing. Friendship and peer nominations of behaviours were collected. Results revealed positive associations between aggressive behaviour and the endorsement of aggressive coping strategies in cases where the protagonist was an unfamiliar peer. However, one important exception emerged: no significant associations between aggression and aggressive coping were revealed for children with high-quality friendships with aggressive peers. In cases where the protagonist was the best friend, there was a significant relation between aggression and vengeful coping, but only for those participants who had a low-quality friendship with an aggressive friend.

Keywords:

• Aggression
• Friendship
• Social Information Processing

Acknowledgments

The research reported in this manuscript was supported by National Institute of Mental Health grant #MH58116 to KHR.

The authors would like to thank the children, parents, and teachers who participated in the study, as well as Charissa Cheah, Stacey Chuffo, Kathleen Dwyer, Erin Galloway, Jon Goldner, Sue Hartman, Amy Kennedy, Angel Kim, Sarrit Kovacs, Wonjung Oh, Bridget Fredstrom, Alison Levitch, Abby Moorman, Andre Peri, Margro Purple, Joshua Rubin, and Erin Shockey who assisted in data collection and input.