Goals and Strategies to Solve Peer Conflict: Comparison by Aggression Trajectories 1

[...]this difficulty with friends may lead to detrimental outcomes later in life such as low selfesteem, poor school achievement, school dropout, and delinquency (Berndt & Keefe, 1992; Opotow, 1991). For a better understanding of why children tend to behave aggressively in the context of peer conflict, researchers have examined two important social-cognitive factors that might underlie children's aggressive behavior: social goals and strategies to manage conflict, as the theory of social information processing explains (Crick & Dodge, 1994). Following goal selection, children then decide on a specific behavioral response or strategy (Delveaux & Daniels, 2000). [...]this theory posits that children's initial steps of social information processing may lead them toward responding with aggression (Erdley & Asher, 1998). Three decades ago, Slaby and Guerra (1988) compared social information processing components of social problem solving (i.e., goal selection, solutions) and beliefs supporting aggression among three groups of adolescents: antisocial aggressive offenders, high-aggressive non-offenders in high school, and low-aggressive high school students.