Do moral emotions buffer the anger-aggression link in children and adolescents?
Section snippets
Anger and aggression
Aggressive behavior intentionally causes physical harm, psychological harm, or distress to others and is often associated with emotional states of anger (Krahé, 2013). Anger is an intense, affective reaction to threat or the perception of threat that involves a fight-or-flight response to an instigating stimulus (Lazarus, 1991). With the exception of moral anger (see Montada & Schneider, 1989), research with various measures of anger and aggression seems to align with the frustration-aggression
Moral emotions and aggression
Unlike anger, moral emotions are thought to help children anticipate the negative consequences of aggression and adjust their behavior accordingly (Arsenio, 2014, Malti, submitted for publication, Tangney et al., 2007). In the present study, we focused on two distinct moral emotions of particular relevance to children’s aggressive conduct: moral guilt and sympathy. Moral guilt is commonly referred to as regret over wrongdoing (Kochanska et al., 2002, Malti and Latzko, 2012). With the exception
Moral emotions, anger, and aggression
Our major goal was to assess moral emotions (i.e., guilt and sympathy) as potential buffers of the anger-aggression link in children and adolescents. Research on these competing emotions and aggressive behavioral outcomes is scarce. One previous study has investigated guilt and anger-related aggression (Tangney, Wagner, Hill-Barlow, Marschall, & Gramzow, 1996). Nine- to 17-year-olds who rated themselves as more guilt prone were less likely to anticipate aggressive responses to hypothetical,
The present study
In the present study, we employed an ethnically diverse sample of 4-, 8-, and 12-year-olds to investigate guilt and sympathy as potential moderators of the anger-aggression link. In line with recent conceptual and empirical works outlining the differential/competing relations of moral emotions and anger to aggression (Arsenio, 2014, Lochman et al., 2010, Malti, submitted for publication), we hypothesized that moral emotions would offset the anger-aggression link (i.e., that high anger would be
Participants
A community sample of 80 4-year-olds (M age = 4.48, SD = .37, 39 girls [49%]), 80 8-year-olds (M age = 8.47, SD = .24, 42 girls [53%]), and 82 12-year-olds (M age = 12.53, SD = .36, 40 girls [49%]) participated (N = 242, 121 girls [50%]). All children were fluent in English (speaking and comprehension), as were their caregivers (speaking, comprehension, and writing). Families resided in a major Canadian city and were recruited from local community centers, events, and summer camps. As a proxy of SES,
Descriptive statistics
Table 1 displays the means and standard deviations of study variables by age group. A series of one-way ANOVAs revealed age differences in aggressive behavior, F(2, 238) = 50.05, p < .001, ηp2 = .30, anger, F(2, 238) = 6.32, p < .01, ηp2 = .05, and sympathy, F(2, 238) = 97.55, p < .001, ηp2 = .45. Based on Bonferroni-corrected post-hoc comparisons, 4-year-olds were rated as more aggressive and reported less sympathy than 8- and 12-year-olds (ps < .001), whereas 12-year-olds were rated lower in anger than 4- (p <
Discussion
The negative short- and long-term implications of anger and aggression manifest directly as fighting and violence (Arsenio & Lemerise, 2010), and indirectly as learning difficulties (Brennan et al., 2012) and social adjustment issues (Ladd et al., 2014) across development. As such, mitigating the anger-aggression link represents an important avenue for educators to improve the behavioral functioning and well being of children and adolescents. Amoral anger and the moral emotions of guilt and
Acknowledgement
This research was supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Sincerest thanks to the children and caregivers who participated, and the members of the Laboratory for Social-Emotional Development and Intervention who helped with data collection, entry, and coding.
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2017, Computers in Human BehaviorCitation Excerpt :The results indicated that moral identity moderated the direct association between trait anger and cyberbullying. This is roughly consistent with the previous findings that the link between anger and aggression is moderated by other moral variables, such as moral emotions including moral guilt and sympathy (Colasante et al., 2015) and moral awareness (He & Harris, 2014). Furthermore, the indirect relation between trait anger and cyberbullying via moral disengagement was also moderated by moral identity.