A comparison of structural and contextual features of middle school children's playful and aggressive fighting

Abstract

This study compared structural and contextual features of playful [rough-and tumble play (r/t)] and aggressive fighting based on direct playground observations of two classes of 8 and two classes of 11 year old children. Most bouts of r/t and aggressive fighting were dyadic, but significantly more bouts of the former involved three or more participants than the latter. Rough-and-tumble play was found to contain more individual action patterns than aggressive fighting, but the latter was more varied in form than some earlier studies had shown. Both wrestling and chasing were seen more in r/t than aggressive fighting, but restraint in bouts of chasing was not more common in playful chasing than aggressive chasing. Positive and neutral facial expressions were more characteristic of r/t, and negative facial expressions were more characteristic of aggressive fighting. Rough-and-tumble initiations were more likely to receive an r/t response and less likely to receive an aggressive response than were aggressive initiations. Participants in r/t were more likely to have been together than to have been apart prior to the encounter, but this tendency was strongly mediated by sex. In three out of the four classes, children were more likely to have been together prior to same sex r/t interactions and to have been apart prior to mixed sex r/t interactions. Participants in r/t were not significantly more likely to have been together beforehand than participants in aggressive fighting. Finally, while most bouts of r/t led to the participants remaining together, the proportion that did so was not significantly greater than was the case for bouts of aggressive fighting. Possible reasons why r/t and aggressive fighting did or did not differ in these ways are discussed.