A Longitudinal Study of Aggression and Antisocial Behavior

Abstract

An assumption that aggression and antisocial behavior represent the same dimension of personality appears frequently in the literature. For example, Dollard et al., (1939) used crime rates to support their thesis that frustration leads to aggression. Bandura and Walters (1959) wrote of adolescent aggression in describing their study of delinquents. Lefkowitz et al., (1977) considered arrests as a criterion to validate their measure of aggression. Perhaps the absence of evidence about the relationship between aggression and criminality has gone unnoticed because antisocial behavior is identified as being behavior injurious to society and aggression is defined as behavior intended to injure. Yet not all behavior intended to injure is criminal, and not all criminal behavior appears to be aggressive. The present research is aimed at disentangling antecedents of aggressiveness and antecedents of antisocial behavior.