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Distinguishing Proactive and Reactive Aggression in Chinese Children

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Abstract

This study examined proactive and reactive aggression and their relation to psychosocial adjustment in three samples (N = 767, 368 girls, M age = 10.03) of Chinese school age children. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that a two-factor model which distinguished both proactive and reactive aggression fit the data reasonably well, and also fit the data better than a single-factor model in all three samples. The distinction between proactive and reactive aggression was found for both boys and girls. Reactive aggression was more strongly related to reciprocated friendship (negatively), peer victimization, emotion dysregulation, hostile attributions of others’ behavior in ambiguous social situations, and self-reported loneliness and social anxiety (positively) than was proactive aggression. Proactive aggression was related to positive outcome expectancies and efficacy beliefs of aggression for boys but not for girls, but the significant gender difference was only found for positive outcome expectancies. The findings suggest that proactive and reactive aggression represent two distinct forms of aggression which are associated with specific adjustment outcomes in Chinese children.

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Notes

  1. Vitaro et al. (2006b) also identified some gender differences concerning the correlations between reactive and proactive aggression (0.51 for boys, 0.46 for girls), and between family revenue and reactive aggression (−0.14 for boys, −0.19 for girls). However, these differences did not compromise the distinction between proactive and reactive aggression for both boys and girls.

  2. To reduce the skewedness of the aggression data, in all three samples variables were log transformed. The CFAs results based on log-transformed data were similar to those based on the original data. Therefore, the results were reported with the untransformed data.

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Acknowledgement

We thank Jo Ann M. Farver for her comments on earlier versions of this paper. We also wish to thank the children and teachers who participated in the study.

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, 96822, USA

    Yiyuan Xu

  2. East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Zengxiu Zhang

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Correspondence to Yiyuan Xu.

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Xu, Y., Zhang, Z. Distinguishing Proactive and Reactive Aggression in Chinese Children. J Abnorm Child Psychol 36, 539–552 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-007-9198-0

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