Familial Clustering of Trends in Aggression

Abstract

ObjectivesExamine trends in aggressive behavior from 1991 to 2015, investigate whether these trends apply equally to all individuals, and explore the extent to which differences in trends over time cluster within families.MethodsOur study included 69,465 measures from 40,400 individuals, from 15,437 Dutch families. Aggression was measured between 1 and 4 times by self-report. We fitted a mixed effects model, modeling the effect of time, age, and gender on aggression, and considering the three levels of nesting in the data, i.e. repeated measures, individuals, and families. To investigate if individual differences in trends in aggression over time cluster within families, variance in aggression and in time and age effects was partitioned into within- and between family variance components.ResultsWe found a steady decline in aggression over time, between 1991 and 2015, as well as over the life course. Across time and age, women had slightly higher levels of aggression than men. There was clear evidence for clustering within, and variation between families, both in overall aggression levels and in time effects.ConclusionsWe confirm earlier findings of a decline in aggression over the past decades. Not all individuals follow the downward trend over time for aggression to the same extent. Trends over time cluster within families, demonstrating that family factors are not only important to explain variation in aggression levels, but also in understanding differences between individuals in time trends.