Understanding Aggression: Physical, Verbal and Relational

Aggression is a behavior that is intended to harm another who is motivated to avoid that harm. Aggression must be a behavior and not a feeling or thought. Within aggression, it has been put into different forms, physical, verbal and relational aggression. Forms of physical aggression is having the intent to physically harm another person who does not wish to be harmed. With researchers doing studies it is proven that men are much more likely than women to use physical aggression. Within the past two decades, researchers have been examining relational aggression and the long term effects of viewing relational aggression in the media on aggressive behavior during adolescence.

Relational aggression is a behavior intended to harm or manipulate

Viewing physical aggression in the media is an important risk factor for increased physical aggression, and decreased empathy and prosocial behavior. Studies show that exposure to relational aggression in the media is also associated with relational aggression behavior in children viewing certain media. This study found that preschool children that viewed more “educational media” tended to inscr easily show relational aggression across a four month period. Another researcher examined relational aggression on children between the ages of eight and twelve. During this study, it was found that children who viewed higher levels of relational aggression in the media help more supportive mornativve beliefs about relational aggression one year later which can be moderated through active mediation by parents. Long term associations only in children whose parents did not discuss the media with

Children often play violent video games are going to have aggressive behavior that also can turn into relational aggression. It is important that researchers conduct on one factor at a time to understand the specific influence that the factor has on aggression. It is possible that exposure to the relational aggression that is being shown in the media while early in children has the potential to shape relational aggression throughout the lifespan and affects the children in plenty of different ways. It is important for researchers to examine relational aggression during those children in the stage of adolescence because it focuses on a lot of different developmental tasks. I see this becoming a problem because as children get older parents are more likely not discuss the media content to their teenagers, which then leads to teenagers having increased possibility that they will view stronger media content and will process the content on themselves as they see it on the media. I believe that if children view one form of aggression it can lead to displaying other forms of