By Jane F. Gilgun and Samantha Hirschey, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA

Persons who commit aggressive acts base their behaviors on widely-held beliefs and practices. Often their families, communities, and mass media promote the kinds of aggression that they commit. Children and their families who become clients in child welfare agencies often are survivors of physical abuse and other forms of family violence including physical and verbal abuse between the adults in their families. Witnessing violence and being targets of violence are well-established risks for perpetrating aggressive behaviors. These risks can be managed when survivors have had relationships with others who helped them to work through the effects and meanings of the aggression that they have witnessed and experienced.

Beliefs and practices that young people absorb in families and communities are reinforced through mass media. Many films, for example, glorify aggression in the name of vengeance and setting things right. Vengeance is presented as a good thing, necessary to make things right and applauded for doing so. It is no coincidence that young people who act in aggressive ways often believe they are setting things right and expect congratulations for doing so.

Targets of aggression, bystanders, friends, and professionals, however, have other points of view and want the behaviors to stop. They also may want perpetrators to be accountable and to apologize. Professionals often have difficulty shifting perspectives in order to connect to and understand the points of view of persons who act in aggressive ways. Starting where clients are is a basic social work principle. Effective practice with persons who commit aggressive acts begins with understanding the meanings of aggression, both to themselves and to the persons who are their clients.

Types of Aggression

Aggression can be of two broad types: instrumental and reactive.

Instrumental Aggression

Instrumental aggression is an unprovoked, purposeful and non-emotional means of achieving dominance over others and getting what you want at the expense of others. In social settings such as schools, it often is mean to increase popularity among peers.

Bullying is often instrumental in nature, and there are overlaps between aggression and bullying. The purpose of bullying is to display power and dominance over others and often to have fun. Sometimes bullies and the bullied have relationships with others, such as in sibling bullying, but in other settings such as schools, bullies and the bullied do not have social relationships.

Girls’ aggression may be based on desires to dominate and display power and can be a form of bullying. However, in much of girls’ aggression, including relational, verbal, sexual, and physical, relationships are at issue. Therefore, in understanding girls’ aggression—as well as boys—questions about how relationships are in play may help in the development of effective responses.

Persons who engage in instrumental aggression often experience their aggressive behaviors as fun, and they may not realize that their behaviors not only may cause long-term harm to targets but also create a climate of mistrust and fear that interferes with learning, with social and emotional development, and with the development of healthy peer relationships.

Reactive Aggression

Reactive aggression stems from perceived or actual threats. The individuals believe that in particular situations something important is at stake, and they must respond in order to maintain self-respect and the respect of at least some others. They may experience the threat as a physical sensation, something like electricity that shoots through their bodies. They go into automatic and behave in ways that have become ingrained. They also may go into dysregulated states, where flight or fight responses are activated and the thinking part of their brains shuts down. They may not realize the effects of their behaviors on others and on the social climates in which their behaviors take place.

Like instrumental aggression, commonly-held beliefs and practice have a part to play in reactive aggression. Many young people experience complex trauma but do not act in aggressive ways. The differences between those who act out aggressively and those who do not appear to be beliefs. Persons who have experienced trauma and who do not act out in aggressive ways have a history of secure attachments with parents and others, have grown up in prosocial environments where aggression is not valued and prosociality is, and where they have learned that aggression hurts others. They may have some pro-aggression beliefs, but their other positive experiences have helped them to develop capacities for managing their aggression.

Reactive Aggression and Child Welfare Social Work

Reactive aggression is common in children who have experienced complex trauma, which is a series of difficult life events that interfere with the development of trust and thus the building of healthy relationships. Complex trauma also affects emotional and social development, capacities for maintaining focus and attention, and creates fears about the self as worthy of love and respect. Each year, about three million children are reported as abused and neglected, and one million of these reports are substantiated. Therefore, uncounted numbers of young people have experienced complex trauma. While many of them do not commit acts of aggression, many do. Aggression, then, is a core issue in child welfare practice.

When young people have experienced complex trauma, they may misread social cues and attribute hostile intent where none exists. These perceptions lead to fears of rejection and ridicule from others. They may become hypervigilant and primed for defending themselves when they are in classrooms, lunchrooms, and other social situations. Misattributions of social cues are called deficits in social information processing.

Summary

In summary, aggression has many sources. In this blog, we have discussed instrumental and reactive aggression. It is important for child welfare social workers to understand both types in order to tailor their responses to individual children and their situations. When the aggression is primarily reactive, trauma-specific work is called for. If the aggression is instrumental, less time may be needed to deal with trauma. In both types, however, careful work will help young people to gradually change the beliefs that underlie both types of aggression are necessary.

In addition, in some types of aggression, the young people have not experienced complex trauma that is typical in child welfare caseloads. Differential assessment is important to identify the possible factors that feed the aggressive behaviors.

Questions To Consider

Please feel free to leave a comment on today’s blog. What, for example, do you think we left out? Was there anything in this blog that helped you think more deeply about your cases? As you think about the blog, we wonder whether you have had experiences with relational aggression. We hope you consider the following questions.

  • Is it useful for you to know that there are two broad types of aggression: Reactive and instrumental?
  • How might know this be helpful or not helpful to you in your work?
  • If you know a young person’s aggression behaviors are mostly reactive in nature, does it make sense to wonder whether this reactivity is learned behavior, related to past trauma, or a combination? Please explain your answer.
  • Have you ever experienced a desire for revenge?
    • Whatever your response, we encourage you to think about why or why not.
  • Have you seen instances where young people behave in aggressive ways and have not experienced complex trauma?
    • What have you seen as sources of their aggression?

Next Blog

In the blog that follows, we continue our discussion of types of aggression. We consider contact and non-contact aggression, including physical aggression, relational aggression, verbal aggression, and sexual aggression.

About the Authors

Jane F. Gilgun, Ph.D., LICSW, is a professor, School of Social Work, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA. She was a child welfare social worker for more than eight years and has taught courses and done qualitative research on high-risk children and families for many years. A special focus of her research is factors associated with good outcomes when children have experienced complex trauma. Professor Gilgun’s articles, books, and practice manuals are widely available on the internet. Many of them are free.

Samantha Hirschey is a second year master’s student at the School of Social Work, University of Minnesota, USA, and Professor Gilgun’s research assistant. She did her first year internship at the St. Paul Public Schools and her second internship will be at the Community-University Health Care Center that provides mental health services to residents of the inner city of Minneapolis. She has worked in a variety of social service agencies including with children, teens, and adults with mental illnesses and developmental disabilities. She has a special interest in the promotion of integrated behavioral health in children and families.

References

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Crick, N.R. & Grotpeter, J.K. (1995). Relational aggression, gender, and social-psychological adjustment. Child Development, 66 (3), 710-722.

Dailey, A. L., Frey, A. J., & Walker, H. M. (2015). Relational aggression in school settings: Definition, development, strategies and implications. Children & Schools. 37(2). 79-88.

Espelage, D. L., Basile, K. C. & Hamburger, M.E. (2012) Bullying perpetration and subsequent sexual violence perpetration among middle school students. Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, 50 (1), 60-65.

Lingras, K. A. (2012). For better or worse? A developmental perspective on the role of executive function in relational aggression: A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the graduate school of the University of Minnesota. University of Minnesota Libraries Digital Conservancy.

Shields, A. & Cicchetti, D. (1998). Reactive aggression among maltreated children: The contributions of attention and emotion dysregulation. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 27(4), 381-395.

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Winlow, Simon & Steve Hall (2009). Retaliate first: Memory, humiliation and male violence. Crime, Media, Culture, 5, 285-304.