Based on information provided in your textbook how is aggression related to social status

Social information processing

Social information processing theory is a third theory of conduct problems. It focuses on the way children and often particularly teenagers process information in social situations. Social information processing theory suggests that children with disruptive behavior problems perceive, interpret, and make decisions about social information in ways that increase their likelihood to engage in aggressive behaviors (Dodge & Crick, 1990). Such difficulties with social processing could be due to a history of attachment problems or the presence of coercive cycles in the home.

As shown in Fig. 3.3, children with externalizing problems make several key mistakes in their social information processing (Dodge, 2006; Matthys, Vanderschuren, Schutter, & Lochman, 2012). First of all, they are more likely to attribute hostile intentions to their peers. They attend to fewer cues and more hostile cues (Matthys & Lochman, 2017). For example, if a child is pushed by another child in the lunch line, he/she may be more likely to assume the other child did it intentionally to hurt them, rather than assume that it was an accident, particularly if they are likely to turn around and notice other children laughing (vs an apologetic expression on the face of the child who pushed them).

Second, children with externalizing problems generate fewer possible responses in these situations and are more likely to generate responses that are aggressive (vs nonaggressive). For example, in the previous example, such a child may be more likely to push back, rather than asking the other child what is going on or ignoring it. Third, children with externalizing problems often evaluate aggressive behavior more favorably, expect more favorable outcomes from aggressive behaviors, and have more confidence in their ability to enact aggressive (vs more prosocial) behaviors. Likewise, they often evaluate prosocial behavior less favorably, expect less favorable outcomes from submissive or prosocial behaviors, and have less confidence in their ability to withdraw or inhibit an aggressive response. So, in this example, a child who was pushed in the lunch line may decide they need to stand up for themselves by pushing back because they believe that any other response will make them a target in the future. These social information processing deficits seem to arise from early adversity, including family problems at home, including parental modeling and encouragement of aggression (Dodge, 2003).

In sum, children with externalizing problems seem to exhibit several social information processing problems. They are more likely to attribute hostile intentions to their peers, and they attend to fewer and more hostile cues. They generate fewer and more aggressive responses. Finally, they often evaluate aggressive responses more favorably and prosocial responses less favorably—behaviors they may have learned at home.

Social information processing theories

Related to the “survival mode” theory, social information processing models of PTSD and anger propose that individuals with PTSD exhibit cognitive biases that underlie their difficulties with anger and aggression (e.g., Constans, 2005; Taft et al., 2015). One specific type of bias that may link PTSD and anger is the hostile attribution bias (Taft et al., 2015) or hostile interpretation bias (Dillon, Allan, Cougle, & Fincham, 2015), which refers to the tendency to interpret ambiguous interpersonal situations as hostile (Wilkowski & Robinson, 2008, 2010). For example, in a case where someone gets bumped into in a crowd, the person with hostile interpretation bias may be more likely to interpret being bumped as an aggressive action rather than as a mistake (Wilkowski & Robinson, 2010). There is a strong literature basis supporting the link between hostile interpretation biases and increased anger, starting with early work by Dodge (1980), who identified this bias in aggressive children. Since then, researchers have demonstrated that hostile interpretation bias is linked to trait anger and aggression in adults as well (Bond, Verheyden, Wingrove, & Curran, 2004; Epps & Kendall, 1995; Hazebroek, Howells, & Day, 2001; Wenzel & Lystad, 2005). While little empirical work has been done to directly link hostile interpretation bias in PTSD with PTSD-related anger, at least one study in veterans has found that hostile cognitions mediated the relationship between PTSD symptoms at baseline and aggression 6 months later (Van Voorhees et al., 2016).

Hostile attributional bias

Hostile attributional bias is a type of attributional style that is based on social information processing theory (Crick & Dodge, 1994). Broadly speaking, social information processing involves five stages: encoding of social cues, interpretation of cues, response access, response evaluation, and response enactment (Mathieson et al., 2011). Hostile attribution bias is grounded in the second stage of processing: interpretation of cues. In this stage, an individual assigns meaning to social cues that have been perceived, attended to, and stored in short-term memory during the encoding stage. In hostile attribution bias, individuals interpret the intentions of others as hostile in ambiguous social situations (Andrade et al., 2011). Therefore, a hostile attribution bias is the result of a maladaptive pattern of inferring others’ intentions and beliefs.

A preponderance of evidence has demonstrated an association between hostile attribution bias and subsequent aggressive behavior. The link between hostile attribution bias and aggressive behavior is robust and has been found among community populations of elementary and junior high school age youths (Andrade et al., 2011), clinical populations of youths (MacBrayer, Milich, & Hundley, 2003), incarcerated offenders (Dodge, Price, Bachorowski, & Newman, 1990), and adults (DeWall, Twenge, Gitter, & Baumeister, 2009; Dodge, 2006).

There is some discussion in the hostile attribution literature of specificity between the type of provocation situation, the hostile attribution bias, and the type of retaliatory aggression. Researchers have found some support for this hypothesized specificity. For instance, individuals who were relationally aggressive exhibited hostile attribution biases for ambiguous provocation scenarios that were relational in nature (e.g., Bailey & Ostrov, 2008; Yeung & Leadbeater, 2007).

Cognitive vulnerabilities

Although sometimes overlooked in an era in which neurobiological explanations of psychopathology are assigned priority over other mechanisms, cognitive vulnerabilities to CD have been recognized for many years. Foremost among these are hostile attributional biases and CU traits. Children with CD often interpret social behaviors of others as hostile, even when such behaviors are at worst ambiguous (e.g., Dodge & Pettit, 2003). Although such biases are often construed as maladaptive, they may instead reflect adaptive responses to local environments within which affected children are reared—especially contexts of abuse and neglect (cf. Pollak & Sinha, 2002). In fact, aggressive children often ignore current social cues and rely almost entirely on past experiences when evaluating intentions of others in social situations (Dodge & Tomlin, 1987). One interpretation is that aggressive children expect negative evaluations and reactions from peers so they attend selectively to negative cues (see Dodge, 1993). According to social information processing theory, hostile attributional biases drive aggressive social behavior among affected children and adolescents (see, e.g., Dodge, 1980; Dodge, Pettit, McClaskey, & Brown, 1986). Aggressive children up to 50% more likely than controls to interpret neutral behaviors as hostile (Dodge, 1980; Waas, 1988). In turn, hostile attributional biases correlate positively with CD symptoms (Dodge, Price, Bachorowski, & Newman, 1990), over-and-above effects of IQ, socioeconomic status (SES), and race. Perhaps more importantly, aggressive children often see their aggression as both tangibly and instrumentally rewarding and therefore evaluate it positively (Perry, Perry, & Rasmussen, 1986).

More recently, research on CU traits among those with CD has burgeoned given its importance in indicating severity and long-term course (Frick, Ray, Thornton, & Kahn, 2014). As a result, CU traits are now included as a diagnostic specifier in the DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). CU traits include lack of guilt, lack of empathy, and using others for personal gain (see Frick & White, 2008). These traits are stable from late childhood to early adolescence (Frick, Kimonis, Dandreaux, & Farrell, 2003) and predict adult psychopathy, controlling for childhood CPs and antisocial behaviors (Burke, Loeber, & Lahey, 2005). Thus, high CU traits are especially likely among children with early-onset CD who progress to later ASPD (Christian, Frick, Hill, Tyler, & Frazer, 1997; Frick, Stickle, Dandreaux, Farrell, & Kimonis, 2005). Notably, children with high CU traits exhibit a range of cognitive deficits that are not typical among control children or children with CD but low CU traits. These include punishment insensitivity (especially following reward; O’Brien & Frick, 1996; Pardini, Lochman, & Frick, 2003) and positive expectations of aggressive behavior (Pardini, Lochman, & Wells, 2004).

Pharmacological Explanations

Because alcohol can have many effects including making one relaxed, happy, or sleepy, there is no reason to assume it will automatically make one aggressive. As a consequence, the pharmacological explanations for alcohol’s relationship with aggression have to do with how alcohol influences cognitive processes. The pharmacological explanations for alcohol's effects on aggression emphasize alcohol's influence on what cues are attended to in the environment. For example, when a mirror is placed in front of intoxicated individuals, they attend to self-relevant cues more than if the mirror had not been there. The question of why some cues are attended to and others are not has been discussed by numerous theories including alcohol myopia, anxiolytic effects of alcohol, and the social information processing theory.

The alcohol myopia theory posits that alcohol interferes with the processing of attentional information, causing one to attend to the most salient aspect of the situation. When both instigating and inhibiting responses are equally likely, intoxication causes an individual to attend to instigating cues more so than to inhibitory cues, a situation known as “inhibition conflict.” In a meta-analysis of several different types of social behaviors including aggression, risk-taking, self-disclosure, and sexual interest, it was demonstrated that alcohol's effects on all of these social behaviors only occurred when situations of inhibition conflict existed. However, none of the studies explicitly examines manipulated inhibition conflict. The authors used a post hoc categorization of the studies to identify situations of inhibition conflict. Some primary research supportive of the myopia hypothesis has been reported. Additional research has shown that alcohol myopia effects predict numerous types of behavior including prosocial behavior, positive self-evaluations, as well as decisions about drinking and driving and condom use. More current studies using the TAP to explicitly study intoxicated aggression have shown that when intoxicated participants are distracted by another cognitive task, the relationship between intoxication and aggression is reduced, suggesting that when attention is diverted from aggression-facilitating cues, intoxicated individuals are less likely to respond aggressively.

However, alcohol myopia is not the only theory as to why alcohol makes one attend to facilitative cues and disregard inhibitory cues. The anxiolysis–disinhibition model proposes that in situations in which aggression has the potential to occur, anxiety is also present. This anxiety can be due to fear of retaliation for engaging in aggressive actions or fear of censure for aggressive actions. The anxiety arising from the situation may inhibit responses to it. Hence, in situations in which aggression is likely and alcohol is also present, those who have been drinking alcohol feel less anxiety than those who have not been drinking, and are therefore more likely to engage in aggressive behavior. A meta-analysis examining the myopia hypothesis versus the anxiolytic hypothesis found evidence supporting both mechanisms. In terms of alcohol myopia, a significant effect of alcohol on aggressive behavior was found in situations of high inhibition conflict (as rated by the researchers). A small but significant effect was also found in situations of low inhibition conflict. However, the effect of alcohol was stronger for high versus low inhibition conflict suggesting a significantly stronger effect under situations of high inhibition conflict. In addition, the influence of inhibition conflict depended on the dose of alcohol. When low dosages were used, a significant effect of alcohol on aggression was found in both low and high inhibition conditions. However, when high doses of alcohol were used, the effect of alcohol was present only under high conflict inhibition conditions. The low inhibition condition did not produce a significant effect. In support of the anxiolysis–disinhibition model, the difference between intoxicated and sober individuals in aggressive behavior increased as the amount of anxiety present in the studies increased. Although these results suggest that inhibition conflict and anxiolysis–disinhibition do play roles in the effect of alcohol on aggressive behavior, it is unclear if they are mutually exclusive hypotheses or really part of the same mechanism.

One other model has been used to explain the effects of alcohol on aggressive behavior. The social information processing perspective argues that aggressive actions are a product of several separate cognitive skills, including the encoding and interpretation of cues existing in the interpersonal situation, response generation, outcome evaluation, response selection, and response enactment. In one study, participants who consumed or did not consume alcohol were presented with a video tape showing one individual rudely changing the television channel on another person. Different versions of the video showed the individual behaving aggressively or in a more neutral manner. Participants were then asked to rate the individuals on several dimensions and then decide what would happen next. Results showed that alcohol did not have an effect on participants' perceptions of the situation. Intoxicated individuals did not view the offending individuals' action as any more intentional or aggressive than sober participants. However, there was a difference between intoxicated and sober subjects in terms of decision making. Those who had consumed alcohol made less adaptive (i.e. more aggressive) response options and were more likely to endorse the use of aggressive options then were subjects who received a placebo.

The evidence that alcohol does have pharmacological effects on aggressive behavior is substantial. It is clear that alcohol influences the cognitive decision-making ability of individuals; however, the mechanism for that effect is still not well understood. Alcohol myopia, anxiolysis–disinhibition, and social information models all have some support in the literature. It is not yet clear which is the best explanation. It is possible all three may actually be aspects of a single mechanism. As mentioned earlier, alcohol myopia and anxiolysis–disinhibition are similar in the mechanisms they propose and in many hypotheses. The social information model is not necessarily at odds with either the myopia or the anxiolysis–disinhibition models. In addition, the current evidence for some people who hold expectancies about alcohol, the presence of alcohol-related cues in the absence of intoxication giving rise to aggression suggests that a more cognitive perspective integrating all these models may be the most complete explanation for the acute effects of alcohol on aggressive behavior.

Social-Emotional Information Processing

Early work in developmental psychology by Bandura (1973) suggested that cognitive learning processes are important in the transmission of aggression from parent to child. The now famous Bobo doll experiment, in which children are shown how to be aggressive toward a proxy object by a parental figure, demonstrated that children learn behavior by imitating, or modeling, someone else's behavior so that children learn to be aggressive by observing aggression in their families and in the community (Bandura, 1973).

Later studies, also, demonstrated that maltreatment during childhood has negative effects on a number of cognitive functions (Irigara et al., 2013) including deficits in verbal and episodic memory, working memory, attention, and executive functions. Childhood maltreatment has also been shown to adversely impact social-emotional development in adolescence and adulthood and is associated with negative cognitive schemas regarding self and others, deficits in affect regulation, conditioned associations between abuse stimuli, emotional distress, and memories/cognitions of maltreatment triggered by environmental stimuli. In addition, childhood maltreatment has been associated with social information processing problems, including reductions in encoding relevant social cues, increased hostile attribution bias, as well as a general tendency to select, and value, aggressive responses to hypothetical socially ambiguous interactions (Weiss, Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 1992).

Research regarding the development and maintenance of aggression highlights a variety of social cognitive processes and has shown that aggressive individuals are more likely than others to interpret both ambiguous and benign cues as hostile, and that hostile attribution biases are positively related to aggressive behavior (Dodge, 1980; Teisl & Cicchetti, 2008). Importantly, a meta-analysis of more than forty studies reports robust and significant associations between a hostile attribution of intent and aggressive behavior (de Castro, Veerman, Koops, Bosch, & Monshouwer, 2002). Based on this work, Dodge, Bates, and Pettit (1990) proposed a social information processing theory to explain ‘the cycle of violence’ described by previous investigators. This group suggested that abused children are more likely to develop deficient patterns of social information processing, which result in increased levels of aggression. This theory (Crick & Dodge, 1994; Dodge, 1986) described six steps of SIP: (1) encoding (i.e., selective attention to internal and environmental cues such as facial cues and verbalizations), (2) interpretation and mental representation of these cues (e.g. attributions of intent, a function of attention to particular cues), (3) clarification of goals (i.e., selecting desired goals and outcome of the situation), (4) response access or construction (i.e., generation of possible responses), (5) response evaluation and decision (i.e., determination of the quality of each alternative response and evaluation of the likelihood that each alternative will produce the desired outcomes), and (6) behavioral enactment (i.e., behavioral response; Crick & Dodge, 1994). Deficits in social information processing have been shown to partially mediate the effects of early life maltreatment on later aggressive behavior across the lifespan (e.g. Calvete & Orue, 2011; Dodge et al., 1990; Dodge, Pettit, Bates, & Valente, 1995; Taft, Schumm, Marshall, Panuzio, & Holtzworth-Munroe, 2008). In prospective studies, Weiss et al. (1992) have demonstrated that harsh discipline significantly predicted child aggression six months later, even after controlling for socioeconomic status, child temperament, and marital violence. The results showed that harsh parental discipline predicted later school aggression that was partially mediated by impairments in social information processing. In another longitudinal study, Dodge et al. (1995) reported that one-third of the variance (33%) in the relationship between aggression exposure in childhood and later behavioral problems was accounted for by attention to and encoding of relevant social cues, hostile interpretations of peers' intentions, accessing of aggressive behavioral responses to cues, and favorable evaluation of the consequences and desirability of aggressive responses

In addition to social cognitive factors, other work has pointed to the relevance of emotional regulation in the development of aggression especially in the context of the relationship between childhood maltreatment and later aggressive behavior. For example, Briere (2002) proposes that normal emotion regulation develops through the process of trial-and-error learning to manage uncomfortable internal states and that children progressively develop increasingly sophisticated strategies of internal coping as they encounter more challenging and stressful experiences. If so, it is extremely difficult for children exposed to violence at the hands of their caretakers to develop these adaptive skills because ongoing aggression toward the child disrupts their trial-and-error learning leading to affective instability, difficulty in inhibiting expression of strong negative affect, and difficulty in limiting their dysphoric state. Such individuals tend to be emotionally hyper-responsive and overreact to negative/stressful events due to their inability to effectively regulate their emotions and this results in aggression and related behaviors such as substance abuse, inappropriate sexual behavior, bingeing/purging, or self-injury (Briere & Gil, 1998). Supporting this view is data showing a positive relationship between a history of child abuse and emotion dysregulation (Cloitre, Stovall-McClough, Zorbas, & Charuvastra, 2008; Kim & Cicchetti, 2010).

While the literature tends to separate cognitive and emotional factors in this regard, it is likely that both are involved in the development and maintenance of aggression. Lemerise and Arsenio (2000) first proposed to include emotion processes in social information processing models in order to expand the explanatory power of these models to understand aggressive behavior. In their review of the interdependence of cognition and emotion, Storbeck and Clore (2007) posit that emotion processes modulate and mediate basic cognitive processes. Others (Teisl & Cicchetti, 2008) have demonstrated that maladaptive cognitive and emotional processes made unique contributions to the relationship between child physical abuse and peer nominations of aggression and disruptive behavior in a sample of children aged 6 to 12. In their study scores of social information processing accounted uniquely for 10% of the variance in the overall indirect effect, while scores of emotion regulation accounted uniquely for 55% of the variance in the indirect relationship between child abuse and aggression. Thus each factor contributed unique variance to the relationship between child abuse and aggression. Others suggest that social cognitive and emotional processes interact with one another (Lee & Hoaken, 2007). In fact, neural mechanisms that underlie social and emotional processes may be partly redundant and interactive and results of fMRI studies reveal interactions between regions of the brain thought to be involved in the processing of these types of information (Norris, Chen, Zhu, Small, & Cacioppo, 2004). The authors employed fMRI to examine brain activity while participants viewed pictures that included emotional or social content. They suggested that regions of the brain previously implicated in social and/or emotional processes showed evidence of an interaction in processing. Evidence for such an interaction in social and emotional processing was provided by patterns of brain activation in the superior temporal sulcus, the middle occipito-temporal cortex, and the thalamus. These regions of the brain that have been implicated in processing social information appeared especially active when the stimuli also conveyed emotional information (Fig. 2).

Efficacy of PST for Aggression

Aggression in modern societies is both a personal and a social problem that needs to be prevented by available behavioral technologies and sociopolitical means. Aggressive behavior is often perceived as an individual’s reaction to problem situations. The person faces a problem situation and tries to overcome it by what he or she has in his or her behavioral repertoire. The problem-solving approach to the prevention of this costly phenomenon suits well. But, does the problem-solving approach or therapy play a role in the prevention of aggressive behaviors? If it does, is it effective? According to the social information processing theories, aggression is defined as aggressive problem-solving strategy. Scientific investigations on the use of the problem-solving approach for prevention purposes in offenders and the efforts to prevent subsequent crime episodes have shown a significant increase in the recent past years (Bourke & Hasselt, 2001; McGuire & Hatcher, 2001).

Anger is an emotion that precedes aggression. The analysis of the scientific literature shows that cognitive–behavioral approaches are frequently used in the prevention of aggressive behaviors and that they are effective. Sukhodolsky, Kassinove, and Gorman (2004) conducted a meta-analysis comparing 21 published and 19 unpublished scientific studies investigating the effectiveness of cognitive–behavioral approaches in reducing the feelings of anger in children and adolescents. A total of 1953 children and adolescents participated in these studies. Four cognitive–behavioral treatment approaches were compared in the meta-analysis study. These were skills training, problem-solving training, affective education, and multimodal interventions. According to the results, the overall effect size for the cognitive–behavioral approaches was found to be 0.67 (Cohen’s d). This shows that the cognitive–behavioral approaches are effective in the medium range in reducing anger in children and adolescents. The results of the comparisons of the approaches showed that skills training and multimodal interventions were more effective than the others in reducing aggressive behavior and increasing social skills; however, the problem-solving approach was found to be the most effective approach in reducing subjective anger.

Aggressive behaviors constitute a major problem in schools, and they can be permanent if they are not prevented or if no attempts are made to prevent them. Therefore, the prevention of aggression in schools is an urgent social need. Some of the implementation of the problem-solving approach in schools produced mixed results. In a study, Lochman and Curry (1986) administered 18 sessions of problem-solving skills training to half of the 20 aggressive boys with an average age of 10 years, and 18 sessions of self-instructional training to the other half. Both the methods produced significant increases in on-task classroom behavior, reductions in parents’ ratings of boys’ aggression, and increases in boys’ self-esteem. In another study, Hay, Byrne, and Buttler (2000) randomly assigned 20 male and female students with an average age of 15.8 years having low self-esteem and social relationship difficulties to a treatment or a control group conditions. A 12-session problem solving and conflict resolutions treatment program was administered to the treatment group. At the end of the program, compared to the control group, a significant increase was observed in the self-esteem level of the students in the treatment group. In another study, Olexa and Forman (1984) randomly assigned 64, fourth- and fifth-grade urban disadvantaged students to social problem-solving training, response cost, social problem-solving training plus response cost, and no treatment control conditions. They found that students receiving social problem-solving training improved on measures of alternative thinking and consequential thinking skills. The social problem-solving skills of students in the response cost condition were not improved. However, this improvement was not reflected in the teacher evaluations.

Child and adolescent delinquency is an important social problem in today’s modern societies. Therefore, the treatment and the prevention of juvenile delinquency is a pressing social need. Irreparable consequences may result from the delinquent acts both for the children engaging in the act and for the victims of delinquent acts. What can be done after it happens? Can problem-solving training be used to reduce aggressive behavior of juvenile offenders? Ang (2003) tried to answer this question by a study with 105 juvenile offenders with a mean age of 14.71 years. Fifty-eight of the children were assigned to social problem-solving skills training and 47 to a waiting list or control group. Social problem-solving skills training was provided once a week for 8 weeks in a group format. At the end of the study, the aggressive behaviors of the children in the problem-solving skills training group decreased significantly compared to the control group. The work of Lindsay et al. (2011) has shown that the problem-solving approach could be used in offenders with intellectual disability as well.

Aggressive children and youth are at a heightened risk for experiencing interpersonal difficulties and are unable to make use of appropriate conflict management skills. These children and youth experience isolation and loneliness. In a study, Webster-Stratton, Reid, and Hammond (2001) randomly assigned 99 children with early-onset conduct problems, ranging in age from 4 to 8 years, to a social skills and problem-solving treatment or to a waiting list. Compared to the waiting list control group, children in the treatment group had fewer externalizing behaviors at home, displayed less aggression at school, more ordinary behavior with peers, and more positive conflict management strategies. In another study, Vaughn, Ridley, and Bullock (1984) assigned 13 aggressive children to a problem-solving training and 11 to control conditions. Children in the treatment condition received 50 sessions of interpersonal problem-solving training and children in the control condition participated in reading-story sessions for an equivalent period of time. Results showed that aggressive behavior in children in the treatment condition decreased from pretest to posttest, but no change in aggressive behavior in children in the control condition took place.

Most intervention studies are designed for and carried out with aggressive boys. In one study, Leff et al. (2009) were interested in whether or not problem-solving would be an effective method of preventing aggression in relationally aggressive girls. For this purpose, they assigned 32 inner-city third- to fifth-grade African-American girls with relational aggression to problem-solving group and 11 to control conditions. The findings of the study suggested that girls’ at-risk relational and physical aggressive behaviors, hostile attributions, and feelings of loneliness tended to decrease compared to the control condition. The investigators also noted that the problem-solving program was well accepted by the girls.

Aggression is a common feature of persons with antisocial behaviors. Therefore, the scientific evidence for effectiveness of intervention programs designed for reducing aggressive behavior of antisocial individuals is important. In a study, Kazdin, Siegel, and Bass (1992) randomly assigned 97 children (7–13 years) displaying serious antisocial behaviors into three groups. They provided one group with problem-solving skills training, one group with family management, and a third group with problem-solving skills training plus parent management conditions. As the investigators anticipated, both problem-solving skills training and parent management methods improved child functioning, and the combination of problem-solving and parent management was more effective than the individual interventions. At posttreatment and 1-year follow-up, children in the combined problem-solving skills training and family management conditions displayed less antisocial and aggressive behaviors than children in the control condition.

Theoretical Perspectives

Theoretical models address the link between trauma and aggression from several perspectives including neurobiological, genetic, cognitive-behavioral, and sociological. In seeking to account for the prevalence of IED among the East Timor population, Silove and colleagues have considered how socioecological factors contribute to individual experiences of posttraumatic anger. Silove and Steel (2006) note that societies vary in their capacity to respond to disasters or conflicts. Conflicts are frequently followed by periods of chaos and disorder, and in many cases the community-level socioeconomic vulnerability predates the event. According to their model ADAPT (Adaptation and Development After Persecution and Trauma), conflicts and disasters disrupt key social domains including safety, social networks, justice, identities and roles, and institutions (political, religious, cultural, and social). Disruption of these domains compounds the trauma of the initial event and contributes to the development of posttrauma psychopathology (Silove & Steel, 2006). In the case of IED in Timor-Leste, Silove and colleagues propose that traumatic experiences of violence and persecution are compounded by frustrations related to the socioeconomic environment (such as high unemployment, poverty, and lack of access to health care), which serve to maintain the anger attacks even after the conflict has ended (Silove et al., 2009). Indeed, research by this group has found that postconflict distress mediates the relationship between trauma exposure and socioeconomic disadvantage and anger (Brooks, Silove, Steel, Steel, & Rees, 2011).

Focusing at the level of the individual, Miller and colleagues have observed that trauma-exposed individuals often develop psychopathology along internalizing or externalizing behavioral dimensions (Miller, Greif, & Smith, 2003; Miller, Kaloupek, Dillon, & Keane, 2004; Miller & Resick, 2007). The internalizing dimension is characterized by high negative emotionality and low positive emotionality, while the externalizing dimension is characterized by high negative emotionality and low behavioral control. Aggressive behavior among trauma-exposed individuals is often comorbid with other disinhibited behaviors such as substance abuse, impulsivity, and antisocial behavior. The symptom profile of trauma survivors, they propose, is explained by broad personality predispositions as well as genetic and environmental factors (Wolf et al., 2010). Indeed, there is evidence that certain specific genetic variations (e.g., MAO-A, FKBP5, ankyrin-3) interact with trauma exposure to increase aggression and other impulsive behaviors (Bevilacqua et al., 2012; Caspi et al., 2005; Logue et al., 2013; Waltes, Chiocchetti, & Freitag, 2016; Zannas & Binder, 2014).

Chemtob and colleagues have proposed a cognitive-behavioral “survival mode” theory of PTSD-related anger and aggression. The authors posit that individuals with PTSD continue to function in “survival mode” for an extended period after the traumatic event has ended (Chemtob et al., 1994; Chemtob, Roitblat, Hamada, Carlson, & Twentyman, 1988; Novaco & Chemtob, 2002). This mode of functioning is adaptive for short time periods of actual acute threat; however, persistence of this mode of operating after the threat has passed is detrimental to adaptive functioning and results in the dysregulated emotions, physiology, and behaviors that are characteristic of PTSD. According to this hypothesis, perceived threats trigger “survival-mode” behavior; once engaged this behavioral response precludes more extensive cognitive processing of new events. Instead, cognitions are biased toward perceiving threats, and the result is increased vigilance and reduced self-monitoring. These response tendencies become entrenched through a positive feedback loop (Chemtob et al., 1988).

Like Chemtob's survival-mode model, social information processing (SIP) theories posit that biased cognitive and emotional responses to social stimuli support maladaptive social behavior including aggression and IED (Arsenio, 2000; Coccaro, Fanning, Keedy, & Lee, 2016; Crick & Dodge, 1994; Dodge et al., 1990; Taft, Schumm, & Marshall, 2008). In early work on SIP, Dodge et al. (1990) found that deficits, such as poor encoding of social cues, limited accessing of prosocial response options, facilitated access to aggressive response options, and hostile bias in interpreting social cues accounted for much of the relationship between physical abuse and aggressive behavior in children (Dodge et al., 1990). Aggressive adults with IED exhibit hostile attribution bias, more negative emotionality, and report less efficacy for engaging in prosocial responses than nonaggressive adults. They also anticipate more favorable outcomes for aggressive behavior than nonaggressive adults (Coccaro et al., 2016). Now there is evidence of cognitive biases supporting aggression in populations with PTSD and trauma exposure. Taft et al. (2008) observed that SIP deficits were associated with both physical and psychological intimate partner violence by military veterans, and SIP biases appeared to mediate the relationship between childhood maltreatment, PTSD symptoms, and IPV perpetration (Taft et al., 2008). Other cognitive-behavioral theories focus on the role of distorted cognitions and beliefs in the maintenance of PTSD. Specifically, following a traumatic event, many individuals who develop PTSD acquire overgeneralized negative beliefs about trust, self-esteem, esteem for others, power and control, and intimacy (Herman, 1997; Monson et al., 2006; Resick & Schnicke, 1993). These beliefs function to insulate the individual from further trauma, but they are maladaptive when they are extreme (unrealistic or overly rigid) and when they interfere with affective expression that is needed to reconsolidate the traumatic memories (Resick, Monson, & Chard, 2008). In cognitive processing therapy these maladaptive schemas are called “stuck points” and resolving these stuck points is a key focus of treatment. In prolonged exposure therapy for PTSD, developed by Foa and colleagues, anger is regarded as an avoidance strategy that facilitates emotional disengagement from traumatic memories. Although reinforcing in the short term, this coping strategy is maladaptive in the long term, as it contributes to the development and maintenance of PTSD (Feeny et al., 2000; Foa, Steketee, & Rothbaum, 1989; Jaycox & Foa, 1996; Riggs et al., 1992).

Research into the neurobiology of PTSD and IED has led to the development of neural circuit models of these disorders. Specifically, PTSD and IED are associated with characteristic variations in brain structure and function in common neural circuits, offering a potential explanation for the co-occurrence of PTSD and aggression. Specifically, individuals with PTSD show abnormal neural activity in brain regions associated with emotional reactivity to stimuli (amygdala and insula) and brain regions mediating emotion regulation (regions of prefrontal cortex [PFC] including the orbitofrontal cortex [OFC]; dorsolateral prefrontal cortex [DLPFC]; dorsomedial prefrontal cortex [DMPFC]; and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex [VLPFC]). Specifically, individuals with PTSD show increased blood oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) activity and regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in the amygdala (Liberzon et al., 1999; Rauch et al., 1996; Rauch et al., 2000; Shin et al., 2004; Shin et al., 2005) and insula (Rauch et al., 1996) and decreased response in OFC (Britton, Phan, Taylor, Fig, & Liberzon, 2005), medial PFC (Bremner, Narayan, et al., 1999; Bremner, Staib, et al., 1999; Shin et al., 2004; Shin et al., 2005), medial frontal gyrus (Shin et al., 2004), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) (Bremner, Narayan, et al., 1999; Bremner, Staib, et al., 1999; Britton et al., 2005; Lanius et al., 2001; Lanius et al., 2003; Shin et al., 2004), and thalamus (Lanius et al., 2001; Lanius et al., 2003) to trauma-related stimuli and non-trauma-related threat stimuli (e.g., emotional faces). Studies find positive associations between symptom intensity and regional brain activation in the insula (flashbacks; Osuch et al., 2001), amygdala (total PTSD severity; Shin et al., 2004), PFC (inversely; Osuch et al., 2001; Shin et al., 2005), and medial frontal gyrus (inversely with total PTSD severity; Shin et al., 2004) during symptom provocation and emotion processing. Aggressive individuals, including those with IED, show impaired emotion regulation (Fettich, McCloskey, Look, & Coccaro, 2015) as well as abnormal brain structure and function in brain regions that support emotion regulation (Yang & Raine, 2009). Neuroimaging studies show that aggressive individuals have: (1) impaired frontal lobe functioning; (2) hyperactive amygdala activity in response to threat; and (3) abnormal connectivity between prefrontal regions and amygdala, disrupting emotion regulation (Anderson, Bechara, Damasio, Tranel, & Damasio, 1999; Coccaro, Sripada, Yanowitch, & Phan, 2011; Davidson, 2000; Grafman et al., 1996; Yang & Raine, 2009). Accordingly, both PTSD and aggression are associated with abnormal brain functioning, including hyperreactivity in brain regions that support threat response and negative emotionality (e.g., amygdala and insula) and hypoactivity in regions that support emotion regulation (e.g., prefrontal cortex; Coccaro, McCloskey, Fitzgerald, & Phan, 2007; Etkin & Wager, 2007; McCloskey et al., 2016).

Abstract

Advances in social information processing (SIP) theory have contributed to the understanding of the ways in which cognitive operations lead to aggressive behavior in childhood. Despite these advances, applying SIP theory to the design of interventions to promote social competence and prevent aggressive behavior remains in a formative stage. Few programs have explicitly applied the SIP theory. Moreover, among the relatively few programs that have used SIP as a theoretical basis, the applications of the SIP theory vary widely. This article provides a general framework for applying the SIP theory to school-based interventions. We review key elements of the SIP model and distinguish SIP from the more general social problem-solving perspective. We discuss several methodological issues in conducting the SIP intervention research.