Aggressive Children's Perceptions of Behaviorally Similar Peers: The Influence of One's Own Behavioral Characteristics on Perceptions of Deviant Peers

Abstract

Students (grades 3, 7, and 10) classified as aggressive, withdrawn, or nondeviant responded to descriptions of four types of hypothetical male peers: aggressive (AG), withdrawn (WD), aggressive-withdrawn (AW), and neutral (NEU). Aggressive students were more likely to report that they would include the AG peer in social activities than did the withdrawn and nondeviant children. Similarly, the aggressive group had fewer negative affective responses to the AG peer stimuli than did the nonaggressive groups. Findings were consistent with other researchers' assertions that aggressive students evidence a self-serving bias in evaluations of their competence and a tendency to discount their role in aggressive exchanges. Within-subject differences revealed that, on some dimensions, aggressive children made fewer distinctions among the deviant hypothetical peers than did nondeviant and withdrawn children. Results are discussed in terms of how similarities between the perceiver and target can inform both research and clinical efforts to modify children's emotional and behavioral reactions to deviant peers.