Does Relational Aggression Clarify or Confuse the Study of Sex Differences in Aggression?

Abstract

Dr. Cote provides an interesting review of the development of sex differences in physical and non-physical aggression and begins to propose mechanisms by which such sex differences emerge including biological, evolutionary, and social factors. Until recently, the finding that significant sex differences exist in the prevalence of different forms of psychopathology was underutilized in etiological research. Fortunately, there has been a bit of a paradigm shift such that understanding sex differences is now a main aim of many studies, and one that has even drawn support from funding agencies such as the National Institute of Health in the US. The study of sex differences in aggression has been greatly influenced by the emergence of the constructs indirect aggression, social aggression and relational aggression, which are relatively synonymous. Before one can build a developmental model of aggression that has, at its premise, the assumption that boys are more likely to engage in physical aggression and girls are more likely to engage in relational aggression, at least two issues need to be resolved. The first is whether relational aggression occurs more frequently in girls than in boys. Although there may be some debate, as evident in Dr. Cote’s review as to the point in development when reliable sex differences in physical aggression emerge, there is very strong evidence that such sex differences are consistently found beginning at some point in the first 4–5 years of life and that they increase in magnitude with age. Data are not as consistent in revealing sex differences in relational aggression. In some studies girls are reported to be more relationally aggressive (e.g., Crick and Grotpeter 1995), whereas in other studies boys are reported to exhibit higher levels of relational aggression than girls (e.g., McEvoy et al. 2003; Tomada and Schneider 1997). In still other studies, the association between relational aggression and impairment has been stronger for boys than for girls (Crick Eur J Crim Policy Res (2007) 13:201–203 DOI 10.1007/s10610-007-9047-2