Postcards from the Id

The Link Between Social Rejection And Aggression

Here’s a link to an interesting article discussing recent research into the link between social rejection and aggressive behavior. In two separate studies, researchers set up conditions where individuals are either “rejected” or “accepted,” and then assessed their follow-up perceptions and interpretations. The research suggests individuals who are socially rejected tend to perceive the actions of others as significantly more hostile, and are more likely to act hurtful towards people they do not know. From the article:

"Prior case studies show the majority of school shooters have experienced chronic peer rejection," said the study's lead author, C. Nathan DeWall, Ph.D., from the University of Kentucky. "And while not everyone who feels rejected reacts violently, we found they tend to act out aggressively in other ways. We wanted to help explain psychologically why this happens." A full report of the study appears in the January issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association.

The article touches specifically on the phenomena of school shootings, but the ramifications of the connection between rejection and aggression go well beyond that. Obviously, the most significant application of information like this is in schools, where social interaction is a daily occurrence, and world views are still being formed. Obviously, there are still numerous areas of research in this area as well. For example, what about perceived rejection versus actual rejection? Are some individuals better able to handle rejection than others, and why? If someone has experienced chronic rejection, what interventions can reverse their hostile interpretations? In addition, are there certain quantifiable characteristics in people that correlate with being rejected more frequently?  Questions abound!  Therapy would focus on these issues on a case by case basis, but trends on a larger scale would be excellent to quantify, in addition to being helpful in providing clinicians with more direction (particularly with prevention and early intervention).

As a broken record in addition to a blogger, I will point out the indirect relationship this research has to social connectivity.  Simply put, efforts on the part of people in general to attempt to connect with others, in particular with those who have, for whatever reason, difficulty connecting to others, would have a positive impact in this area as well.

Beware The Green-Eyed Monster - Genitalia Edition

Wow, what a story.  Jealousy rears its ugly head once again, leading to the most incredible of behaviors.  When I used to do therapy with individuals convicted of domestic violence, jealousy was an issue that required significant intervention, because it is a powerful emotion that drives extreme behavior, and because it is difficult to manage.  Part of the problem is that every action a jealous person takes is reinforcing, whether they find the incriminating evidence or not.  If they do, then the response is, "See!  I told you!"  If they don't, the response follows a classic stress-relief pattern. Either way, the jealousy-based behavior (checking the phone calls, spying, etc.) is more likely to be re-enacted, not less, and generally with more frequency and intensity.  This is a topic that begs for a more thorough post at some point, but in the meantime, if you or someone you know has problems with jealousy, don't simply discount it, especially if the behaviors are escalating, or are suffocating, isolating, etc.  Jealousy tends to be a problem that only gets worse over time, unless the person learns how to manage it, then reduce/eliminate it. 

An Interesting Article on Toddlers, Temper Tantrums, and Later Aggression

Scientific American Mind as a magazine I have come to really enjoy. I have let a few of my magazine subscriptions lapse over the last year or two, simply because I haven’t had time to read enough of each issue to justify the cost. However, I am going to subscribe to Scientific American Mind. While the articles are written in a language that makes the material assessable to a layperson, I generally find them to be interesting and informative. This article is one example. Most of my experience in psychology has been working with adults, so I don’t pretend to have more than a general knowledge of psychological issues related to children. This particular article is well written, informative, and the sites some specific data relevant to their discussion. Given my work in corrections and forensics, I tend to gravitate to articles dealing with issues such as aggression, even in children, but I definitely think this article is well worth reading. This is the magazine I figured Psychology Today would be when I checked out an issue or two of that magazine years ago. I’ll subscribe in part because I’d like to get each and every copy, but I also like the idea of supporting media the present issues such as psychology, science, etc. to the public in an effective manner. Therefore, they’ll get my money!

Social Bullying Linked to Anxiety and Depression in Adults

This research is interesting. The impact of social bullying (being the target of rumor, gossip, exclusion from a group, etc.) may have important psychological consequences for people, well into adulthood. As the concept of bullying has broadened past the more well-known variety (physical bullying), there has been more interest in assessing the impact of social bullying on people. From the article:

"Even though people are outside of high school, the memories of these experiences continue to be associated with depression and social anxiety," said Dempsey, who graduated from Columbine High School in Colorado one year before the 1999 school shooting there and now studies school prevention programs. "It was interesting to see these relationships still continue to exist even though they are in early adulthood now and in a completely different setting.

The researchers examined possible gender differences, as well as whether having friends reduced the impact of the social intimidation. The results did not find any differences between the genders in terms of the impact of bullying, and also found having friends provided no buffer from the onset of anxiety or depression.  The article touches on how this type of interpersonal difficulty can lead to depression and anxiety - through the re-shaping of one’s self-view. Another quote:

For some children, having friends and positive support can help make them more resilient to the slings and arrows from bullies, Storch said. But other children take the words and abuse more to heart and begin to believe what's being said about them. "Those types of negative thoughts are actually believed to be at the core of things like depression and anxiety," Storch said. "Behaviorally what starts happening is you avoid interactions and situations that could be quite positive for you."

Depression and anxiety are heavily impacted by social interactions, so this result is not surprising. It is also encouraging that the authors examined this aspect of the connection between the social bullying and the onset of depression and anxiety, because it fits perfectly. What is less encouraging is that there isn’t much research in terms of prevention programs specifically focused on these kinds of issues. The focus, until recently, has been on the more physical types of bullying. In addition, the article notes many people will simply write off these types of incidents as typical difficulties we all have to go through, but it’s much more than that, as the recent MySpace suicide incident demonstrated. People carry these experiences with them far longer than many realize, and they can prove to be quite destructive and limiting. Hopefully research like this will initiate more work into school prevention and education.

Sleep Problems Associated with Behavioral Difficulties in Children

This article reviews recent research into the relationship between insomnia (and other sleep problems) and behavioral problems, in children. According to the article, the researchers assessed the children based on weight, sleep-disordered breathing (SDB), other sleep-related difficulties, as well as their behavior.  The study determined the additional sleep disorder, such as insomnia, was the greatest predictor of behavioral difficulties:

“Somewhat surprisingly, the strongest predictor of adverse behavioral outcomes and CBCL scores was the presence of at least one additional sleep diagnosis, especially insomnia - not the measure of SDB disease severity, which researchers thought would play a more significant role.”

However, the authors cautioned against interpreting the results to mean SDBs did not have an impact. It may just be the impact is not quite as strong as the other factor. Weight also played a factor, with the largest difference between weight groups on measures of behavioral conduct being between the overweight versus average-weighted children.

Overall, the results indicate less sleep equates with more behavioral difficulties. To me, this isn’t surprising at all. If you’ve read this blog, you’ve seen numerous posts where I suggest how you sleep is an effective rough estimate of your overall functioning. In children, it makes complete sense that difficulties in functioning will manifest as conduct-related problems. What I’d like to do at some point is to examine the literature on treatment of sleep-related problems in children. If anyone has any suggestions, please leave me a comment!

Aggressive Behavior in Children Linked to Early Neglect

According to this article, aggressive behavior in children (defined as "arguing, cruelty to others, destruction of property, disobedience, threatening people and fighting or physically attacking others") is related to neglect of that child before their second birthday.  The author's discuss how the focus of research has been primarily on outright abuse, while the impact of neglect has received far less attention.  From the article:

"A child was considered neglected if his parents or caregivers did not provide adequate supervision or failed to meet the child's minimum physical needs for food, clothing and shelter. Abuse was defined as either sexual or physical."

And:

"This isn't the first time we've seen evidence suggesting that in some circumstances, neglect can be as harmful to children as abuse," said Hussey, who published a study in Pediatrics in 2006, linking neglect to teenage violence, depression and drug use. "Understanding the consequences of early childhood neglect will help us plan programs and other interventions to benefit these children throughout their lives."

Nothing to add here, I think the doc said it all...

An Examination of Physical versus Social Aggression in Children

According to this article, physical aggression in children is manifested by both their genes, as well as the environment in which they grow up. Conversely, social aggression (spreading rumors, isolating others) is seen as being influenced primarily by environmental factors. The article also states that previous research has demonstrated that having physically aggressive friends increases physical aggressive in genetically predisposed kids. However, the current research looked and whether socially aggressive children are impacted by having socially aggressive friends, and whether there is an interactive effect for either type. Here is what the study found:

The researchers found that friends' physical aggression interacts with genetic liability to predict children's own physical aggression. Specifically, the genetic disposition to physical aggression is more likely to express itself when children are exposed to physically aggressive friends. No gene-environment interaction was found with respect to children's social aggression. Instead, friends' social aggression seems to be directly associated with children's own social aggression, independent of children's genetic disposition to this behavior. The results also revealed that the effect of friends' aggression on children's aggression only seems to occur in the context of the same type of aggression. In other words, friends' physical aggression predicts children's physical but not their social aggression, whereas friends' social aggression predicts children's social but not their physical aggression.

In other words, if a child is predisposed to being violent, it is more likely to come out if they are socializing with other physically aggressive kids. I would assume, then, that kids without the predisposition will not be impacted by being around others who are aggressive (unless I am interpreting this wrong?). On the other hand, being socially aggressive is far more influenced simply by who you choose to associate with.

Bottom line - choose your friends wisely, kids! Oh, and parents, you are right to check on who your kids are choosing to hang out with. I’ve always been amazed at how kids who want to engage in certain behaviors to find each other, whether for good or ill. I’ve also pointed out that if an individual wants to increase or decrease a certain behavior, simply hang out with people who are already doing it. This goes for adults, too. If you want to quit smoking, don’t go out to the smoke pit and hang out with everyone smoking out there, it’s too hard. If you want to be more physically fit, hang out with people who exercise and eat healthy. Seems this research suggests that this sort of wisdom applies to aggression as well.

New Research Suggests Anti-psychotics Do Not Curb Aggression

This article from the NY Times summarizes the results of a new study that found anti-psychotic medication had no impact on reducing aggression in individuals with lower IQs.  While I'm not a psychiatrist, I can tell you that many individuals with anger problems are prescribed low doses of Risperdal, Seroquel, and other anti-psychotics for their supposed ability to reduce acting-out behaviors.  It will be interesting to see whether follow-up research bolsters the conclusions of this study.  I do agree with the quote in the article by Dr. Matson, who stated there are very effective behavioral programs designed to help individuals with these sorts of issues.  At the very least, these interventions ought to be attempted prior to, or in conjunction with, placing someone on a medication as strong as an anti-psychotic.