Preschoolers\u27 social information processing and aggression

The current study attempts to extend prior research in the area of social information processing and aggression by assessing evaluations and outcome expectations of preschoolers. Preschoolers were presented with scenarios describing preschool children engaging in either relational or physical aggression. As predicted, children perceived relational aggression more positively than physical aggression. In addition, girls were rated as less mean than boys when depicted engaging in relational aggression. There were no differences however in meanness ratings of girls and boys engaging in physical aggression. Contrary to expectations, teacher ratings of aggression were negatively correlated with perceived instrumental success of physical aggression and unrelated to ratings of meanness of aggression. Implications for program design and future methods for research are discussed