Direct and Indirect Effects of Parenting and Children's Goals on Child Aggression

Abstract

This study tested a dual-mediation model of the relations among harsh parenting, hostile social information processing, and level of child aggression in a sample of 239 (150 male, 89 female) 2nd- to 4th-grade children. The theoretical model posited that harsh parenting has both direct and indirect effects on child level of aggression, with the indirect effects mediated through children's social goals. The model further posited that the impact of social goals on aggression is mediated through other social cognitive processes (i.e., attributions of hostile intent, hostile solution generation, and positive outcome expectancies for aggression). We tested the dual-mediation model with structural equation modeling and found it to be a good fit to the data. Results were consistent with the view that parenting affects children's goal orientation and that children's goal orientation affects their behavior via online processing in social situations.