Professor Joseph Ciarrochi - The upsides and downsides of the dark side.

11th November 2020 - Brown Bag Seminar

Presentation Title:
"The upsides and downsides of the dark side: A meta-analysis of the social costs and benefits of youth aggression for peer relationships, as reflected in peer nominations."


Topic:
How does aggression affect youth social status and friendship in a school setting? Aggression is negative behaviour intended to physically or emotionally harm another. Some theories emphasize that aggression is an expression of disorder, driven by such things as low self-esteem, frustration , aggressive social learning environments, and hostile attributional bias. Other theories emphasis that aggression is functional and designed to secure social resources (e.g., popularity, social status, dominance, defense against bullies). We conducted a meta-analysis to identify the links between aggression and a wide variety of peer ratings, including popularity, likability, friendship, victimization, and many other outcomes. Our results suggests that aggression confers clear benefits to youth social status, but comes with considerable cost. We will discuss the implications of these findings for creating contexts that discourage aggression and selfishness and promote prosocial behavior.