Psychological Perspective on Aggression Among Children
Children are often perceived as innocent and sweet little creatures curious of the outside world and unable to hurt anyone. But, some children turn out to be cruel and violent. But, what is aggression and what is harmless rough and tumble?
According to Cole and Cole aggression is ‘an act in which someone intentionally hurts another’ (1996, p. 406). But, it is very broad. Therefore, they divided the above definition into instrumental aggression and hostile aggression. The first one is committed to achieve a particular goal while the latter involves an intention to hurt another person or to show dominance.
So, the intention is crucial as it is worrying if a child hurts another person with an intention to do it, as opposed to situations where there was a lack of such an intention. Therefore, there is a difference between aggression and rough play. Nicholas Blurton Jones, a professor of Psychological Studies in Education, carried out one of the first studies to look at this issue in 1972.
Based on the studies of face and bodily movements he concluded that when aggression occurs the perpetrator frowns, fixates, hits, pushes and tugs. Rough-and-tumble, on the other hand, includes laughing, running, jumping and wrestling.
Another difference between the two is the context as aggression is more likely to take place when cihldren are competing to play with the same toy while play-fighting is characterized by cooperation. Besides, children who were only pretending to hurt one another would often come back to the other child to play again while when aggression takes place the victim stays away from the perpetrator.
Besides, Blurton Jones found that children who take part in rough-and-tumble are not more likely to be violent than those who do not do it. It indicates that there is nothing to worry about if children play like this.
So, rough and tumble does not equals aggression. Nevertheless, it is worth to teach your children proper behaviour because they may hurt another person unintentionally.
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