Exposure to deviant friends has been found to be a powerful source of influence on children's and adolescents' aggressive behavior. However, the contribution of deviant friends may have been overestimated because of a possible non-accounted gene-environment correlation (rGE). In this study, we used a cross-lagged design to test whether friends'…

This study examined to what extent motives for behavior differentiated between popular, accepted, and rejected adolescents. Based on goal-framing theory, three types of motives were distinguished: hedonic (aimed at short-term gratification), instrumental (aimed at improvement of one's situation), and normative (aimed at acting in accordance with…

Bullying perpetration at school is a long-term predictor of aggression, delinquency, and violence. Most research concentrates on risk factors for such developments, whereas protective factors have been rarely addressed. Therefore, the present study investigates potentially protective effects of family and child characteristics in a prospective…

Prior research has found that proactive and reactive aggression differentially relate to many variables, including peer relations. However, no research has examined the relation between proactive and reactive aggression and peer delinquency, an important proximal predictor of adolescent antisocial behavior. The current study examined the…

This short-term longitudinal study examined the direct association between relational victimization and relational aggression over a five-month period, and proposed that hostile attributional bias for relational provocations mediated this association. Participants were 140 preadolescents (aged 9 to 11 years) in grades four and five. Relational…

Background: All previous longitudinal community studies assessing the continuity of child behavioral/emotional problems were conducted in developed countries. Method: Six hundred and one children randomly selected from a Brazilian birth cohort were evaluated for behavioral/emotional problems through mother interview at 4 and 12 years with the same…

The study adopted a person-centered approach to examine whether clusters of children could be identified on the basis of temperament profiles assessed on four occasions from infancy to early childhood, and if so whether differing temperament clusters were associated with subsequent differences in behavior problems, social skills, and school…

Background: A limited number of mostly cross-sectional studies have examined the possible effects of power sports on aggressive and antisocial involvement in children and youth. The majority of these studies have serious methodological limitations, and results are partly contradictory. Longitudinal studies with representative, reasonably large…

This 17-year longitudinal study tested whether low peer-perceived acceptance and association with aggressive-disruptive friends during preadolescence predicted students' failure to graduate from secondary school. Participants were 997 Caucasian, French-speaking boys from low-socioeconomic status, urban neighborhoods. The boys were recruited in…

A six-year study investigated relationships between individual development and: (1) changes in aggressive expression; (2) continuities of aggressive behavior in girls and boys; and (3) convergence between self-concepts and social attributions of others in ontogeny. Participants were 220 fourth grade students who were followed from childhood…

Findings from 1,027 subjects followed longitudinally from age 10 through age 26 revealed strong connection between aggressiveness ratings at early ages and adult delinquency for boys. Aggressiveness was not predictive of later crime for girls until they reached age 13. For both genders, relation between aggressiveness and crime was largely…

Background: Using longitudinal data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, we examined behavior problems and social and academic outcomes from ages 9 through 12 in children classified into five trajectories of physical aggression, on the basis of maternal ratings obtained from 24 months through 9 years (N = 1195). Methods:…