[MUSIC] Hi, welcome back. We have been talking about how much aggression seems to be playing a huge role in terms of understanding which kids are rejected and also which kids turn out to be popular or controversial, neglected or average. Remember, those rejected kids, about 50% of them are aggressive. But so are the controversial kids. They're also pretty aggressive. But they seem to do it in a way that also makes them sociable. Popular kids and kids who are neglected, tend to be low on aggression. So with that focus, let's talk about all the different types of aggression, and why some of them might be so related to one kind of status. But, some other types of aggression are related to a different level of status or popularity. And what we're going to talk about now are forms of aggression and functions of aggression. First, let's talk about forms of aggression. And by this I mean, what kind of aggression does someone use? What does it actually look like? Well, researchers have demonstrated that there are actually two different kinds of aggression. One of those types is the type that we often see and we often think about when we think about aggressive behavior. It's physical aggression, something that's overt. Everyone can see that this is aggressive behavior. Hitting kids, shoving them, pushing them, threatening them, calling them names. This is the type of aggressive behavior that people often think about and for a very long time, it was the only type of aggression that was actually studied in the literature. But it was Nicki Crick and Marion Underwood and others overseas that started to realize that maybe there's another type of aggression as well. Mostly boys exhibit that overt physical aggression. But maybe there's a different type of aggression that we would see among girls as well as boys, and anyone who has seen the movie Mean Girls knows exactly what this type of aggression is, because it refers to ways of either using your relationship as a way of harming others, or trying to damage someone's social reputation. So, sometimes referred to as indirect, or social, or relational aggression, these include things like ignoring others, giving people the silent treatment, saying I won't be friends with you unless you do exactly what I say. These are things that really use the relationship as a weapon. But it's also possible to try and damage someone's reputation by spreading gossip, by ganging up on them and saying let's all get together and not play with this person anymore. These are also ways that people can be aggressive. And what we know, again, is that while boys are most likely to engage in overt aggression. We see boys and girls equally likely to engage in these relational forms of aggression. We also see that there are big differences in terms of developmental levels. So it's very normal and typical to see physical aggression among young kids, especially kids that are below the age of ten or even below the age of seven. We see a lot of overt aggression. We do see relational aggression there as well, but as kids get older, there's a little bit of a switch. And one of the reasons why is because as we go from preschool up to middle school or high school, so as kids get to be over 13, 14 years old, physical aggression can actually lead to very serious harm and even police interaction. Physical aggression that occurs in urban environments sometimes include gang violence, the use of weapons, or real battery and assault. And maybe for that reason, we see that people engage in physical aggression less and instead, engage in these relational forms of aggression. They're a little bit more sophisticated, they're a little bit sneaky, and there are sometimes things you can do without anyone knowing who the person was that did it. Gossip sometimes starts to spread. But no one knows who started the gossip. So it's actually a sophisticated way of engaging aggressively. We even see relational aggression happening at the college age, and of course, we can imagine that happening in adulthood as well. And, I think there's an entire series of real housewives of wherever that happens in many cities, all around the world, that are really good examples of exactly that type of relational aggression. What's interesting though is that these types of behaviors leads to different types of effects in the social world. So as we talked about before 50% of kids who are rejected are also aggressive, and we also know that the kids who are rejected and aggressive are the more severely of the rejected kids. The aggressive form of rejected kids are also most likely to stay rejected over time, but what we also know is that relational aggression not only makes you rejected, but it simultaneously may be something good for a friendship. So this becomes really confusing for kids, especially as they get from childhood into adolescence, where they're starting to become a little bit less interested in how popular they are across the entire group and they're forming a lot of strong bonds with specific friends. With those friends, what they find is that if you tell gossip about a third party, or if you say to one of your friends let's gang up on someone else and not be their friend anymore, it actually makes you closer to the person that you're colluding with. As you gang up against some third person who's your victim. So for that reason, relational aggression is actually something that might lead you to be rejected overall in the group, but it might come with benefits in your friendship. In our own research, we actually found that kids who were relationally aggressive had friends who reported that they felt closer to them over time, and for this reason relational aggression might increase as we get older and even into adulthood. Because while we might not realize how it's making us very rejected in the larger group. We see our relationships feel like they're getting stronger because of the people that we're bonding with while we're being aggressive. And that's one of the reasons why relational aggression can be so damaging. Next, we're going to talk about functions of aggression.
