The Complex Nature of Youth Aggression: Relations Between Cognition, Discrimination, and Peer Perceptions of Bullying Involvement

Abstract

Youth victimization and aggression are common in adolescents’ everday lives. This study examines relations between youth cognition and reasoning around bullying and possible responses to bullying, peer nominations related to youth roles in the bullying ecology and self-report experiences of perceived racial discrimination using latent class analyses. Participants included 6th ( n = 423) and 9th ( n = 392) grade adolescents in the United States (49.1% female). Five distinct classes emerged: Typical, Uninvolved, Challengers, Experiences Discrimination, and Experiences Discrimination and Involved. Furthermore, participants in these classes reasoned about the acceptability of youth aggression and about their likelihood of different responses to youth aggression in distinct ways. Findings document that the Challengers class was most likely to judge the aggression as wrong and the least likely to indicate that they would not respond if they observed aggression. Furthermore, both classes of youth who reported experiencing discrimination judged the aggression as more acceptable.