Boys, Girls Equal At Social Aggression

Study Shows Boys As Likely As Girls To Use 'Indirect' Aggression

(WebMD)  Girls often get a bad rap for gossiping, forming cliques, and other aggressive social behavior, as characterized in the popular movie Mean Girls. Boys, meanwhile, are known for physically aggressive behavior, such as hitting.

A new study, however, says these attitudes may be at least partly unfounded. While boys are indeed more physically aggressive, girls and boys are equally guilty of aggressive social behavior, according to the report published in Child Development.

Researchers did an analysis of 148 studies that included nearly 74,000 children and teenagers. The studies were mostly done in schools and looked both at direct aggression, which is physical or verbal, and indirect aggression, which includes covert behaviors designed to damage another person's social relations with others, without direct confrontation.

"These conclusions challenge the popular misconception that indirect aggression is a female form of aggression," says Noel A. Card, PhD, assistant professor of family studies and human development at the University of Arizona and the study's lead author, in a news release.

Based on the analysis, researchers concluded that often the same kids who are directly aggressive are also indirectly aggressive. Although boys tend to exhibit more direct aggression than girls, there is little difference between girls and boys for indirect aggression. This continues over different ages and ethnicities.

The researchers also note that because of overlap between direct and indirect aggressive acts, it can be difficult to distinguish between the two. The overlap is greater for boys than girls.

They also found consistent links between direct aggression and other adjustment problems. Kids who are directly aggressive are more likely to have problems like delinquency, poor relationships with peers, and low pro-social behavior (which includes things like helping and sharing).

Kids who are indirectly aggressive often have depression and lower self-esteem. However, they tend to have high pro-social behavior, necessary to get support of others such as convincing peers to gossip and exclude others.

[missingamerica]

Well, duh.

Unless you are so senile that you have forgotten high school and so rich that you have never been around office politics, you know this.

[mominmaine]

the biggest *** I ever met was a guy....a straight guy.

[mominmaine]

oops! rhymes with witch

[dogsoul]

...bullsh*t - you know, it''s funny - they''ll absolutely never come out & say that girls have MORE of a certain bad quality than men.... equal is the most you''ll ever get. But they go out of their way to spout off about how girls are better at this & that - and boys are worse at this & that... any male female comparisons are so wrought with politically correct bias against men they''re basically meaningless.

[formrusmcsgt]

"girls and boys are equally guilty of aggressive social behavior..."
--

Equality.

[formrusmcsgt]

Posted by brdlikblssss at 07:53 PM : Sep 18, 2008

You really need to stop ingesting whatever it is you''re on, pal.....

[rwsmith29456]

What''s the big news? Anybody knows that boys are perfectly capable of being mean as h**l without using violence. Verbal putdowns, exclusion, intimidation are all familiar territory.

[rf35]

drivelphobe, so your screen name is sarcastic, eh?