Hostile attribution of intent: social-cognitive intervention for aggressive adolescents

Abstract

Human aggression is any behaviour directed toward another individual that is carried out with the proximate (immediate) intent to cause harm (Bushman and Anderson, 2001). Aggression among adolescents is a growing problem. The consequences of hostility and aggressiveness continue to be a burden not only on the perpetrators and victims but also on the development of society at large. Thus, it is the need of the hour to understand the specific dynamics of aggression and devise intervention plans for this behavioural problem so that the deterioration of society can be prevented. Research in psychological fields is providing plausible explanations of underlying psychological mechanisms of aggression. This research has shown that aggression is a highly complex behavioral phenomenon with multiple triggers and inhibitory factors. During the past few decades, there has been an increased interest in the role that cognitions play in negative social interactions and problem behavior. This interest stems in part from the hypothesis that humans respond primarily to cognitive representations of their environment and experiences rather than to those experiences themselves. The manner, in which one processes social situation, is a strong determinant of one?s reaction to that situation. In this vein, Dodge and Crick?s Social Information Processing (SIP) model (e.g., Crick and Dodge, 1994) and General Aggression Model (GAM; Anderson and Bushman, 2002) are considered the most generative models in understanding individual differences in such reactivity processes. newlineAggression depends on how an individual perceives and interprets his or her environment and the people therein, expectations regarding the likelihood of various outcomes, knowledge and beliefs about how people typically respond in certain situations and how much people believe they have the abilities to respond to a variety of events (Dodge, 2010; Huesmann et al., 2010). The social information processing model proposes that to react appropriately to social situations..