SOCIALIZATION OF AGGRESSION AND THE PERCEPTION OF PARENTS IN FANTASY

Abstract

Research on both the prediction and determinants of overt aggression in children has usually focused on the intensity of aggressive motivation as a major antecedent variable. For example, in studies attempting to predict overt aggression from related fantasy it has been usual practice to correlate a broad index of fantasy aggression with a category of overt aggressive behavior like fighting or delinquent activity. The implicit hypothesis seems to be that frequency of fantasy aggressive acts is an index of aggressive drive and should be positively correlated with occurrence of overt aggression. Most of these studies failed to find a positive and linear relation between these two variables (7, II, 15, I6). However, recent investigators (5, 9, 12, 13) have stressed that aggressive motives are conflictful and subject to inhibitory influences and they have attempted to measure the strength of these avoidance or inhibition tendencies. In these more recent studies evaluation of fantasy indices of aggression anxiety significantly improved the power of the fantasy behavior to predict occurrence of overt aggression. The present research utilized hypotheses concerning the child's acquisition of inhibitions on aggression to predict types of fantasy content that should be related to overt aggression in young boys. Current theorizing about the developmental determinants of aggressive behavior suggests that a perception of the parent as hostile and nongratifying influences the child's predisposition to aggressive behavior in two ways. It has been assumed that these conditions increase aggressive motivation and, in addition, are contrary to the conditions which motivate the learning of prohibitions on aggression. With respect to the latter, it is suggested that an important motive for the acquisition and practice of parental prohibitions on aggression is anxiety over anticipated loss of parental love. The more intense the anxiety over this anticipated loss the stronger will be the re-