Moderating Effect of a Care Orientation on the Prospective Association Between Popularity and Aggression

• In Event: 3-082 - Sympathy, Moral Reasoning, and Aggression: new Developmental Perspectives

Integrative Statement

INTRODUCTION: This paper brings together four factors related to aggression, specifically the moral orientation of care, popularity with peers, cultural context, and type of aggression. The point of departure of the study is the observation that popularity is an antecedent of aggression (Mayeux & Cillessen, 2004). We examined whether this association would be moderated by the moral orientation of care (i.e., tendency to respond to the needs of others) and whether the form of this moderation would vary across cultural contexts. Two models of care are possible. One is that care is a form of empathy that will inhibit aggression. The other is that care will motivate aggression. Children who care about their friends may be inclined to behave in retaliatory manners when a friend has been hurt. We examined whether care would moderate the association between popularity and subsequent aggression and whether the form of this moderation would vary across contexts. Consistent with the first model, care was expected to minimize the association between popularity and aggression in collectivistic contexts that emphasize sensitivity to the consequences of one’s behaviors on other; consistent with the second model care was expected to increase the positive association between popularity and aggression in individualistic contexts that emphasize the importance of personal agency. Children in Montreal are known to have a balance between individualism and collectivism, lower middle class children in Barranquilla are known to be more collectivistic than individualistic while upper middle class children in Barranquilla are known to be more individualistic than collectivistic.
METHODS: At each of two times separated by a ten week interval, 351 fifth- and sixth-grade girls and boys from five schools in upper-middle and lower-middle class neighbourhoods in Montréal, Quebec, Canada and Barranquilla Colombia completed a peer assessment measure that produced measures of physical aggression (e.g., “someone who hits, pushes, or shoves people”), relational aggression (“someone who talks badly about others behind their backs”), popularity (“someone who is popular”), and care (“someone who cares about others”).
RESULTS: Linear aggression analyses conducted with Mplus used four T1 measures (aggression, popularity, care, and the interaction between popularity and care) to predict the time 2 measure of aggression with each of the four groups of participants (i.e., upper and lower middle class participants in each place). The interaction score was statistically non significant in all four groups when physical aggression was the dependent variable. With relational aggression, this interaction was statistically nonsignificant with both Montreal groups but statistically significant with the two groups from Barranquilla but with opposite patterns of findings. Care impeded the association between popularity and subsequent aggression in the lower middle class children but promoted it in the upper middle class children.

CONCLUSION: The moderating effect of care on the association between popularity and aggression was observed to vary as a function of type of aggression and cultural context. Cultural dimension appear to ascribe different forms of significance to care. These findings show that the effects of moral orientations need to be examined in culturally informed designs.

Authors

• Lisa Astrologo, Concordia University
  Presenting Author

• Ryan Joshua Persram, Concordia University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Melisa Castellanos, Concordia University
  Non-Presenting Author

• William M. Bukowski, Concordia University
  Non-Presenting Author