Aggressive boys in the classroom: biased attributions or shared perceptions?

This study of 32 aggressive (AG) and 32 nonaggressive (NA) boys applied a social information processing analysis to interactions between children and their teachers. In a cue reading task, AG and NA subjects estimated teacher anger in ambiguous situations where the targets of the teacher behavior were the subjects, NA peers, and AG peers. AG boys predicted that greater teacher anger would be directed toward themselves than did NA boys. However, this could not be interpreted as an attributional bias specific to AG boys, because both NA and AG boys predicted that greater hostility would be directed toward AG boys. Target status was the primary determinant of cue interpretation. AG boys were more likely than NA boys to choose aggressive solutions to problems involving teachers and to judge aggressive solutions to be competent. The results suggested that NA subjects were actually more effective than AG subjects in enacting an aggressive response.