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The Role of Social Norms in the Development of Aggressive Behavior

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Part of the book series: Recent Research in Psychology ((PSYCHOLOGY))

Abstract

Individual differences in the propensity to behave aggressively appear very earlyin life. By age 6 some children have adopted characteristic patterns of aggressive behavior in their social interactions (Parke & Slaby, 1983), and by age 8 children are characteristically more or less aggressive over a variety of situations (Eron, Walder, & Lefkowitz, 1971). The incidence of aggressive behavior continues to increase into adolescence as aggressiveness becomes a relatively stable personality characteristic (Huesmann & Eron, 1989; Huesmann, Eron, Lefkowitz, & Walder, 1984; Olweus, 1979). The more aggressive child is likely to become the more aggressive adult. It is difficult to find any other childhood factor, be it physiological, environmental, or familial, that predicts more of the variation in adult aggression than does childhood aggression.

This research was supported in part by grant MH-48034 from the United States National Institut of Mental Health to N.G.G. and by a James McKeen Cattell fellowship to L.R.H

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© 1992 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Huesmann, L.R., Guerra, N.G., Miller, L.S., Zelli, A. (1992). The Role of Social Norms in the Development of Aggressive Behavior. In: Fra̧czek, A., Zumkley, H. (eds) Socialization and Aggression. Recent Research in Psychology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-84653-3_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-84653-3_9

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-54799-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-84653-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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