An Empirical Test of the Situation Specificty/Consistency of Aggressive Behavior

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there was cross-situational specificty and/or consistency in the observed performance of aggressive behavior for 10 normal and 10 aggressive boys across two school settings, classroom and playground. The specific questions addressed were: (a) do all subjects exhibit some aggressive behavior? (b) Are there differences in rates of aggressive behavior between normal and deviant subjects regardless of setting? (c) Are normal and deviant subjects differentially consistent; that is, are there consistencies in rates of aggressive behavior between settings for one group but significant differences between settings for the other group, and are there specific within-group correlations for one group but not for the other group? The data shows that all of the subjects did engage in some aggressive behavior in both settings. The identified aggressive subjects were significantly more aggressive than were the normal subjects on the playground; they were more aggressive in the classroom setting also, but the differences failed to reach statistical significance. Analyses of between-setting differences for the two groups revealed that while the aggressive sample was significantly more aggresive on the playground than in the classroom, differences for the normal group were slight. The within-group cross-situational correlation for the normal subjects was very high. On the other hand, for the aggressive subjects the rank order correlation between settings was low and nonsignificant. Data were analyzed seperately for one hyper-aggressive subject. He demonstrated high rates of aggression across both settings, and an across-response mode, rank order correlation across the two settings was significant.