The primary focus of this study was to assess children's and adolescents' perceptions of the ways in which peers respond to stressful conflicts that occur amongst them. Key variables that were examined were the social context (a dyad relationship versus a group relationship) and the social atmosphere (a compatible relationship versus an incompatible relationship) in which the conflict occurred. Scenarios were developed to simulate, as close as possible, realistic stressful conflicts that might typically arise in the daily lives of school age children and adolescents. Children and adolescents across three grade levels (1, 5, and 10) were administered a peer report measure in which they indicated to what extent they believed their same-sex peers would respond aggressively. The first part of the procedure required participants to listen to either a social scenario (someone who had been a member of a club was asked to leave) or an academic scenario (someone was given a bad grade by a peer) that described a conflict between two protagonists. The results of this study revealed that, as predicted, females endorsed significantly more aggressive responses for the compatible dyad context compared to the compatible group, incompatible dyad and incompatible group contexts. This finding occurred for overt, covert and withdrawn forms of aggression. These findings were also consistent across the three grade levels. Contrary to the hypothesis, males did not believe that their peers would behave differently across social contexts or atmospheres. Males did however report a higher level of overt and withdrawn aggression than females when the dyad and group conditions were combined. There were no gender differences in the aggressive responses for covert aggression. The implications of females' beliefs that degree of aggression would be highest in the intimate compatible dyad relationship compared to the other relationship contexts were discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.102728 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Sinclair, Nancy L. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology.) |
| Rights | © Nancy L. Sinclair, 2006 |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002573083, proquestno: AAINR27840, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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