Girls’ Aggression and Child Welfare Social Work: Blog 5, Girls’ Relational Aggression: Targets of the Aggression

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

Girls’ relational aggression is behavior intended to damage the relationships of others. As stated earlier, relational aggression includes teasing, gossiping, ostracism, threatening to withdraw or directly withdrawing friendship or social acceptance, misrepresenting others, and spreading rumors. Some relational aggression arises from competition over boys.

Acts of relational aggression are usually not blatant and are thus more difficult to identify than overt, physical aggression. Parents should be mindful that relational aggression is not isolated to peer relationships, but also occurs between siblings. Displays of relational aggression at home may include: excluding siblings from activities, name-calling, and covering one’s ears to signal ignoring, which is behavior particularly seen among younger children. Sibling RA is typically extended from elder to younger siblings, and research indicates that younger siblings who are victimized by RA at home are then relationally aggressive towards peers elsewhere.

Relational aggression can be overt or covert. Often targets of relational aggression know who the perpetrators are. This is overt relational aggression that may come in the form of direct statements and nonverbal communication such as facial expression, hand movements, and social exclusion, as in not inviting someone to join a social activity. At other times, relational aggression is covert, where targets don’t know the sources of the aggression. Leaving hurtful anonymous notes or comments on the internet, lobbying friends to exclude someone, or starting rumors are examples of covert relational aggression. Individuals may engage in covert aggression to avoid counter-aggression and to avoid being known as a person who would seek to harm others.

Adolescence and Effects of Relational Aggression

Adolescence is a time of physical changes, growing self and social awareness, and school transitions, which can leave younger individuals feeling insecure and vulnerable, even without being targets of relational aggression. Leadbetter (2010) said that in adolescence, “Peer group membership is central to the affirmation of identity and regulation of self esteem and fuels a sense of urgency to be included in peer relationships (p. 589).” Being targeted for relational aggression can have negative long-term affects on relationships, identity, and self-worth.

According to Dailey, Frey and Walker (2015), when adolescents experience relational aggression, they are risk for experiencing

(a) future peer rejection, (b) social maladjustment, such as friendship problems, (c) internalizing problems in the forms of isolation and loneliness as well as depression, (d) anxiety problems, and (e) school avoidance, and poor academic performance, impaired school adjustment, and ultimately school failure and dropout (p. 79).

In severe cases, survivors of relational aggression may seek protection through gang membership and engage in retaliatory and reactive aggression, suicidal thoughts, and suicide.

Many young people who are targets of relational aggression have families and friends who are supportive and provide the safety and security necessary to work through the effects of social exclusion and rejection. Some may be students in schools or social settings that have procedures that respond effectively in cases of relational aggression. Targets of the aggression have the trusting relationship that provide the support required to cope with the aggression without being aggressive themselves. Their lack of reactance gives no reinforcement to the aggressive behaviors. Young people who engage in aggressive behaviors and who have relationships of trust are responded to authoritatively. Adults seek to understand them and form relationships with them while being clear that they must not harm others.

Some young people confide in parents and others but the help that others offer is insufficient. It could be that the young people perceive the wider social context as unsympathetic and indifferent to their hurt. Indeed, in many instances, other people don’t understand their suffering and are dismissive. Even when parents are empathic, their efforts may be insufficient to affect how young people perceive themselves and their social status. Their hurt and the consequences of the hurt can be deep and lasting.

Often, young people who are targets of relational aggression are too ashamed to tell anyone about how their peers treat them. Some want to maintain an image of being popular with peers and don’t want to disappoint their parents and others who care about them. They isolate themselves from others and may ruminate about their worthlessness and how they deserve to be treated badly. Often relationally aggressive peers tell them they are worthless.

There is mounting evidence that when young people commit suicide other children not only have excluded them from social groups but they tell them they are worthless and sometimes encourage them to commit suicide. In such cases relational aggression goes beyond the desire to harm another person’s relationships. It becomes a form of aggression that is life-threatening. Under these conditions, young people are unable to handle relational aggression on their own. Aggressors must stop. Often they think they are having fun and don’t anticipate the impact of another young person’s suicide on them. Survivors require safety, reassurance, and opportunities to work through what the aggression means to them.

Many people assume that targets of relational aggression are young people who already are vulnerable and something about them provokes the aggression of others. Young people can and do harass and bully children who appear different to them, such as having facial deformities or other physical differences. In these instances, this is not relational aggression but a form of verbal aggression to which adults must respond to in order to limit the damage such abuse causes.

Targets of relational aggression may be young people who are new to social settings. Other girls may want to assert power and control, which gives them pleasure, by excluding these girls. After a period of time, if the targets are able to withstand the aggression, they are accepted into the social group and the aggression stops. How often this happens is unknown.

Targets of relational aggression may also be girls who have many social assets, such as physical attractiveness, intelligence, good grades, popularity, and athleticism. Relational aggression toward them may arise because their attributes and accomplishments activate insecurities and fears of worthless in others, who rather than deal with their insecurities, take them out on others.

Relational aggression often occurs within the context of inconsistent friendships, where the most popular or well-liked member of a social group can change day-to-day, depending on the attitudes of other group members. In more severe cases, a victim of relational aggression is completely ostracized from their friendship group, excluded from all areas of prior social engagement, such as the lunch table, sports, games, and not being invited to parties.

Still other targets of relational aggression appear to be taking something away from the aggressor, such as a boyfriend or social standing. In such situations, girls who feel something has been taken from them or respond in ways they intend to damage the girls they perceive as competitors.

Aside from a desire for social dominance, relational aggression may also stem from jealousy and revenge. For girls in middle and high school, the emergence into dating relationships and sexual activity may also instigate gossip, rumors, and social exclusion. Prejudice against racial groups, social class, and sexual orientation and expression may also trigger acts of relational aggression. The advancement of internet and personal cell phone use, as well as social media, has expanded the arenas for where relational aggression occurs. Facebook and text messaging has increased the reach of humiliating tactics against targets, such as the viral sharing of photographs and spread of malicious messages.

Summary

Relational aggression is a serious problem in schools and other social settings. It is important to understand the various forms of relational aggression and its effects on targets and others in the setting. Young people can cope with the effects of relational aggression if adults and peers provide them with opportunities to talk through the meanings and affects of the aggression and the young people are assured that they are worthwhile human beings and that the aggressors are behaving in unkind and unfair ways.

Questions to Consider

Please feel free to leave a comment on today’s blog. As you think about the blog, we wonder how you are responding to the ideas we presented. What, for example, do you think we left out? Was there anything in this blog that helped you think more deeply about your cases?

We hope you consider the following questions.

• Have you ever witnessed relational aggression?
  • What do you think was going on with aggressors?
  • Were there bystanders who encouraged the aggressors? What did they do? What did you do?
  • Did racial stereotyping have a part to play?
• Have you ever been the target of relational aggression?
  • What effect did this have on you?
  • Did anyone encourage the aggressors? What did they do? What did you do?
  • Did racial stereotyping have a part to play?
  • Did you talk to anyone about being a target of relational aggression?
    • Did talking help?
• Have you ever performed acts of relational aggression?
  • What did you tell yourself you were doing?
  • How did other people respond to your relational aggression?
  • Did racial stereotyping have a part to play?
  • Did you talk to anyone about being your relational aggression?
    • Did talking help?
• There have been many well-publicized stories in the media about young people who commit suicide in response to bullying. Can you see connections between bullying and relational aggression?

Next Blog

The next blog focuses on girls who perpetrate relational 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

Crick, N. R. (1997) Engagement in gender normative versus nonnormative forms of aggression: Links to social-psychological adjustment. Developmental Psychology, 33(4), 610-617.

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.

Hammel, L. R. (2008). Bouncing back after bullying: The resiliency of female victims of relational aggression mid-western educational researcher. 21(2), 3-14.

Leadbetter, B. (2010). Can we see it? Can we stop it? Lessons learned from community-university research collaborations about relational aggression. School Psychology Review. 39(4). pp. 588-593.

Pronk, R.E. & Zimmer-Gembeck, M.J. (2010) It’s “mean,” but what does it mean to adolescents? Relational aggression described by victims, aggressors, and their peers. Journal of Adolescent Research. 25(2) 175-204