Emotions in social information processing and their relations with reactive and proactive aggression in referred aggressive boys.

We studied emotional aspects of social information processing (SIP) and their specific relations with reactive and proactive aggression in 54 boys ages 7 to 13 who had been referred for aggressive behavior problems and a comparison group. Participants listened to vignettes concerning provocations by peers and answered questions concerning SIP, own and peer's emotions, and emotion regulation. Aggressive boys attributed more hostile intent, happiness, and less guilt; reported more anger; mentioned less adaptive emotion-regulation strategies; generated more aggressive responses; and evaluated aggressive responses less negatively than comparison boys.

Negative feelings exacerbate hostile attributions of intent in highly aggressive boys.

Tested the hypothesis that aggressive boys' tendency to attribute hostile intentions to peers is exacerbated in a negative emotional state. Twenty-nine highly aggressive boys in special education, 12 moderately aggressive boys in regular education, and 16 nonaggressive boys in regular education inferred peers' intentions in 8 vignettes concerning ambiguous provocation by peers. Mild negative emotions were induced by unjust loss of a manipulated computer game.

Negative Feelings Exacerbate Hostile Attributions of Intent in Highly Aggressive Boys.

Tested the hypothesis that aggressive boys' tendency to attribute hostile intentions to peers is exacerbated in a negative emotional state. Twenty-nine highly aggressive boys in special education, 12 moderately aggressive boys in regular education, and 16 nonaggressive boys in regular education inferred peers' intentions in 8 vignettes concerning ambiguous provocation by peers. Mild negative emotions were induced by unjust loss of a manipulated computer game.

Hostile attribution of intent and aggressive behavior: a meta-analysis.

A meta-analytic review was conducted to explain divergent findings on the relation between children's aggressive behavior and hostile attribution of intent to peers. Forty-one studies with 6,017 participants were included in the analysis. Ten studies concerned representative samples from the general population, 24 studies compared nonaggressive to extremely aggressive nonreferred samples, and 7 studies compared nonreferred samples with children referred for aggressive behavior problems.