ATTRIBUTIONAL ANALYSIS OF PEER DIRECTED AGGRESSION

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DESCRIPTION (Adapted from applicant's abstract): This application is a request for a Research Scientist Development Award (RSDA). In the first part of the application, a research plan to examine peer and family aggression from an attributional perspective is outlined. According to this analysis, aggression is a consequence of thoughts that others are responsible for aversive events and the anger that results from this appraisal. Five conceptually related series of investigations are proposed in an attempt to understand these social cognitive determinants of aggression and to foster changes in overt hostility. In a first series of studies, the cognitive processes promoting aggression in school-aged boys are explored. These investigations relate to construct accessibility and examine whether responsibility inferences and/or beliefs that others are "bad" are readily primed by ambiguously caused provocation. In a second series, ingroup and outgroup effects on responsibility inferences are examined in an attempt to understand the processes that might exacerbate intergroup violence. A third series considers whether mothers of aggressive boys exhibit attributional biases similar to their sons, thereby documenting one mechanism to account for intergeneration continuity in family aggression. A fourth set of studies then focuses on impression management skills of aggressives, particularly their understanding, use, and acceptance of accounts that mitigate perceptions of responsibility and reduce anger. These basic processes and mechanisms are then brought to bear in an intervention with incarcerated adolescent offenders. This intervention incorporates principles about inferring responsibility in others, a full understanding of the use and acceptance of accounts, and the long-term consequences of inferring outgroup responsibility. Also incorporated are principles of self-responsibility for achievement-related outcomes. In the second part of the application, the candidate's long-term career objectives and goals for the award period are described. Long-term objectives focus on using attribution theory to examine academic and social motivation in African-American youth. Goals for the award period include: (1) acquiring new methodological and statistical skills in the design and analysis of intervention research; (2) developing an NIMH training grant in Risk and Prevention Studies in Education; and (3) initiating a proposal for a Preventive Intervention Research Center (PIRC).