Relational aggression in sibling and peer relationships during early childhood

Abstract

The role of siblings (N = 50) in the display of physical and relational aggression among peers during early childhood was explored. Specifically, sibling pairs' rates of physical and relational aggression were assessed in their independent social contexts. Findings indicated low to moderate levels of intercorrelation between physical and relational aggression and moderate levels of stability for both physical and relational aggression across an academic year. Observations revealed that older sisters were more relationally aggressive than older brothers, whereas older brothers were more physically aggressive than older sisters. Older siblings directed more aggressive behavior to same-sex peers than did their younger siblings. Older sibling's relational aggression predicted younger sibling's use of relational aggression towards peers. In addition, older sibling's physical aggression predicted younger sibling's physical aggression with peers. This study reveals the importance of a multi-contextual approach (i.e., school and family influences) in understanding the development of aggression and in providing a guide for future interventions.

Introduction

Recent investigations have demonstrated the necessity of assessing relational forms of aggression to understand the social development of girls (see Crick & Zahn-Waxler, 2003). Although great strides have been made in this area, relatively little attention has been given to the identification of factors such as family relationships, that contribute to the development and maintenance of children's relationally aggressive behavior patterns. The role of siblings has been particularly neglected (cf. Stauffacher & DeHart, 2005). Alternatively, although numerous studies have been conducted on the socializing influence of siblings for children's aggressive behavior, these studies have primarily focused on physical forms of aggression and the influence of brothers (e.g., Deater-Deckard et al., 2002, Martin and Ross, 1995). Compounding these limitations, current prevailing theories of the development of aggression depict the behavioral problems of girls as low in frequency until the onset of adolescence (Keenan and Shaw, 1997, Silverthorn and Frick, 1999). Due to these empirical and theoretical shortcomings, we currently know little about aggressive girls, and we particularly lack knowledge of young girls' behavior problems. Given the negative risk status typically associated with aggression and given the numerous advantages afforded by early intervention, this lack of knowledge is significant. These limitations are addressed in the present research through the systematic study of the influence of siblings on the promotion of both relational and physical forms of aggression among peers at school.

Researchers recently have begun to systematically identify and study the behavioral problems of girls. This work has been based on the premise that it is time to “suspend our acceptance of the mythology of more benign childhoods for girls” (Zahn-Waxler, 1993, p. 84) and instead strive for greater gender balance in our investigation and understanding of children's aggressive behavior problems (Crick & Rose, 2000). Consonant with this goal, relational forms of aggression have been identified recently that have been shown to be more characteristic of girls than the physical forms of aggression that have captured the majority of previous empirical and theoretical efforts (for a review see Crick et al., 1999). In contrast to physical aggression, in which physical damage or the threat of physical damage serves as the agent of harm, relational aggression includes behaviors in which damage to relationships or the threat of damage to relationships serves as the vehicle of harm (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995). Relational aggression includes both direct and indirect acts, such as threatening to end a friendship unless a friend complies with a request, using social exclusion (both verbally: “You can't play with us” or nonverbally: blocking entry to a playhouse) and the “silent treatment” as retaliatory behaviors or to gain a desired scarce resource, and spreading false rumors to encourage peers to reject a classmate. Findings from numerous studies provide evidence to support the harmful, damaging nature of relationally aggressive acts. Individuals of various ages (i.e., from preschool to young adulthood) describe relationally aggressive behaviors as hostile, hurtful, emotionally distressing, and often enacted in anger (Crick, 1995, Crick et al., 1996, Crick et al., 2004, French et al., 2002, Galen and Underwood, 1997, Morales et al., 2002). Additionally, studies of children and adolescents who are the frequent targets of relational aggression indicate that relational victimization is associated with serious concurrent and future social–psychological adjustment problems including peer rejection, symptoms of depression/anxiety, loneliness, and impulsivity (for a review see Crick et al., 2001). Taken together, these studies demonstrate that relational aggression is a highly salient and harmful aspect of many children's daily experiences, one that is both viewed and experienced by children as hurtful and “aggressive”.

Brothers and sisters are children's most frequent companions (McHale & Crouter, 1996) and, for many children, they provide the first opportunities to interact with others who are similar in age (Dunn, 1993). Siblings provide a rich context for socialization, one that has been shown to be distinct from that offered by parents. For example, in a series of studies, Bank and colleagues (e.g., Bank, Patterson, & Reid, 1996) have demonstrated that features of the sibling relationship significantly predict future sibling well-being even after the influence of parents has been taken into account. According to social learning and coercion theories, older siblings provide their younger brothers and sisters with modeling and “training” in the use of social behaviors, including aggression (Bandura, 1973, MacDonald and Parke, 1984, Parke et al., 1988, Patterson, 1986, Putallaz, 1987).

Evidence from numerous studies supports the premises of these theories by demonstrating the importance of the sibling context for the promotion of children's physically aggressive behavior. Research has shown that sibling interactions are often characterized by relatively high levels of physical aggression and conflict during childhood, which is not surprising given the closed field or involuntary nature of these close relationships (Abramovich et al., 1986, Aguilar et al., 2001, Baskett and Johnson, 1982, Berndt and Bulliet, 1985, DeHart, 1999, Furman and Buhrmester, 1992). In fact, levels of conflict and aggression among siblings often exceed those found within the peer context (DeHart, 1999). Thus, sibling interactions may offer children frequent opportunities to observe and learn about aggression. Further, observational studies of sibling interactions have revealed that children who exhibit physical aggression are relatively likely to have brothers or sisters who also exhibit physically aggressive behaviors (e.g., Beardsall, 1986, Brody et al., 1987, Dunn and Munn, 1986, Patterson, 1982, Pike et al., 1996). Additionally, longitudinal research has documented that one sibling's use of physical aggression significantly predicts the other sibling's future use of physical aggression (e.g., Dunn & Munn, 1986) and that this association holds even over the course of a decade (Compton, Snyder, Schrepferman, Bank, & Shortt, 2003). These investigations provide substantial support for Patterson's (1986) view of sibling influences as a “training ground” for the learning of aggression.

Findings from four initial studies suggest that the assessment of the role of siblings in the learning of relational aggression may be a fruitful avenue of inquiry. In one study, relational aggression was observed to occur more often during the interactions of preschoolers and their siblings than preschoolers' interactions with their friends during two separate semi-structured home-based play sessions (Stauffacher & DeHart, 2005). In another study, school-aged children and their siblings were asked to describe, in an open-ended manner, the types of mean (i.e., aggressive) things they did to their brothers and sisters (O'Brien & Crick, 2003). Analyses revealed that relational aggression was cited significantly more often than other forms of common aggressive behaviors (e.g., physical aggression, verbal insults) as the hostile strategy of choice in sibling interactions. In the third study, school-aged (i.e., grades 3 to 6) boys' relational aggression with siblings, but not girls', was found to be predictive of children's peer status at school, beyond what was attributable to the child's peer-directed aggression alone (Lockwood, 2002). Finally, research with a large sample of adolescent sibling dyads revealed that relational aggression between the siblings was associated with key indices of relationship quality (i.e., intimacy and negativity; Updegraff, Thayer, Whiteman, Denning, & McHale, 2005). These initial studies have provided evidence that the sibling relationship may be a salient context for transmitting relational aggression in the home environment.

One of the most serious consequences of sibling aggression is that children often carry these behaviors into new social contexts, particularly the peer group at school. According to prevailing theories of the role of family interactions in children's social development (i.e., social learning perspectives, attachment theory, coercion theory; Parke and Buriel, 1998, Patterson, 1982, Sroufe and Fleeson, 1986), children learn particular behaviors and relational styles within family relationships and then generalize what they have learned to friends and peers. Consistent with this perspective, relatively high levels of sibling physical aggression have been shown to significantly predict relatively high levels of physical aggression at school with classmates (e.g., Duncan, 1999, MacKinnon-Lewis et al., 1997). This is highly problematic given that peer aggression has been shown in hundreds of studies to portend a variety of significant developmental risks for children starting at an early age (for a review see Coie & Dodge, 1998). Due to the seriousness of this issue and its implications for prevention and intervention efforts, studies of sibling influence on children's use of peer-directed aggression have increased significantly in the past decade. Despite great accomplishments in this area, one limitation has been the neglect of the role of siblings in peer-directed relational forms of aggression. That is, we currently do not understand why having an older aggressive sibling or how the sibling relationship may affect the display of aggressive behavior among peers at school. Research on this topic is sorely needed if we are to move beyond current studies of the correlates and consequences of relational aggression toward the development of theories and an empirical knowledge base of the etiology of relational aggression. Thus, the central purpose of the present study was to explore the association between sibling status and peer-directed relational aggression at school during early childhood. Given that the current study was an exploratory investigation, we compared relational and physical aggression in their separate peer contexts. Future research studies are needed to assess the amount of relational and physical aggression that occurs between siblings in the home environment and how that behavior may predict peer-directed behavior.

Although sibling studies have varied considerably in the age gap targeted between older and younger siblings, past studies have shown that siblings who are relatively close in age have significantly more influence on each others' aggressive behavior than siblings who are relatively distant in age (e.g., Felson & Russo, 1988). In addition, Aguilar et al. (2001) compared sibling pairs whose age differed by 1–3 years with siblings whose age differed by 4–6 years and found that those with closer birth spacing exhibited significantly higher levels of physical aggression and conflict in their semi-structured task. Based on this evidence, the sibling pairs in the present research were closely spaced in terms of age (i.e., 1–3 year age gap) to maximize the possibility of observing the association between older and younger sibling's relational aggression with their peers.

Preschoolers were targeted in the present research for several reasons. First, early childhood is the developmental period when sibling relationships have been shown to be particularly salient and influential (Deater-Deckard et al., 2002). Additionally, siblings' influence on physical aggression and other antisocial behaviors has been shown to begin as early as the preschool years (Martin & Ross, 1995) and to have a long lasting effect (Compton et al., 2003). These findings suggest that early childhood may represent a period in children's lives when sibling influences on other forms of aggression, such as relational aggression, may be relatively salient and powerful.

Increasingly researchers are recognizing the importance of studying the development of relational aggression during early childhood (Ostrov & Crick, 2005). Past early childhood studies have documented that relational aggression is associated with children's language capacity, parenting behavior (e.g., psychological control), and children's social–psychological adjustment (e.g., peer rejection, depressed affect, loneliness; Bonica et al., 2003, Crick et al., 1997, Hart et al., 1998), Generally, girls have been found to be more relationally aggressive to peers (also more relationally aggressive to female peers than to male peers) than boys (Burr et al., 2005, Johnson and Foster, 2005, McNeilly-Choque et al., 1996, Nelson et al., 2005, Ostrov and Keating, 2004, Ostrov et al., 2004, Russell et al., 2003, Sebanc, 2003). Early childhood was also selected as the developmental period of choice because reliable and valid observational measures have been developed recently that adequately capture the relationally aggressive behaviors of preschoolers (Ostrov and Keating, 2004, Ostrov et al., 2004). The majority of past studies for samples ranging from preschool to adulthood have relied on peer, teacher, and self-reports of relational aggression methods, which may possibly suffer from certain biases in particular circumstances, such as gender stereotyped ratings (Crick et al., 2004; cf. McNeilly-Choque et al., 1996, McEvoy et al., 2003, Pellegrini, 2001b). These biases may be especially problematic when, as is true in the present study, sex or gender is a factor of interest (Condry and Ross, 1985, Susser and Keating, 1990). Consequently, the development of these valid and reliable observational measures for young children for the assessment of relational aggression within peer contexts represents an empirical advance that creates the opportunity to examine sibling influences on peer-directed relational aggression in a relatively objective manner (Ostrov et al., 2005, Pellegrini, 2001b).

Through the utilization of sophisticated methodology, the present short-term longitudinal observational study builds on prior research exploring the relation between older and younger siblings' relational aggression in peer contexts at school. The present study has several methodological strengths including the use of an ecologically valid procedure, which permitted an assessment of children's aggression in their natural peer contexts. The use of reliable observations during free play contexts at school permits an assessment of a wider array of relationally aggressive behaviors (e.g., gossip, rumor spreading, social exclusion) that past sibling and peer measures, which relied on dyads or triads, may have been unable to explore or may have artificially reduced (Ostrov et al., 2004, Stauffacher and DeHart, 2005). In addition, unlike past dyadic assessments, we did not violate statistical assumptions of parametric tests, in that the behavior of each member of the dyad is truly independent. Thus, the present study is an important initial research step in defining the link between the sibling relationship and school-based peer relationally aggressive interactions.

In keeping with the main goals of the study, we first explored the stability and intercorrelations among the key variables. In keeping with past observational findings, we predicted low to moderate levels of intercorrelation between physical and relational aggression and moderate levels of stability across the year for both age groups (Crick et al., 2004). Next, we hypothesized that older siblings would display more relational and physical aggression with their peers than their younger siblings would. Third, we expected that in general boys would be more physically aggressive and girls more relationally aggressive. Fourth, we hypothesized that physical aggression would be directed at male peers more frequently than at female peers, and that relationally aggression would be more commonly displayed towards female peers than with male peers (Ostrov and Keating, 2004, Pellegrini, 2001a). Specifically, we anticipated that this effect would hold for both the older and younger sibling groups. Fifth, we hypothesized older siblings' peer-directed relational aggression at school would be associated with their younger siblings' use of peer-directed relational aggression at school. We predicted that these associations would be revealed, such that the sibling pairs would exhibit similar patterns of peer-directed relational aggression. In addition, we predicted similar findings for observed physical aggression (i.e., older children's peer-directed physical aggression was expected to be associated with their younger siblings' peer-directed physical aggression).