Social Anxiety and Aggression in Behaviorally Disordered Children

Thirty-nine boys (M = 10 years) attending classes for the behaviorally disturbed were given questionnaires on trait anxiety, social anxiety, empathy, depression and self esteem, and teachers rated them on aggression to test the hypothesis that anxiety and empathy attenuate aggression. Contrary to the hypothesis, anxiety and empathy scores were not correlated with aggression. However, scores on all of these measures were higher than those for normative samples suggesting that this sample had a limited range. A second important finding was that social anxiety was positively correlated with trait anxiety and depression, lending discriminant and concurrent validity, respectively, for the use of a relatively new Social Anxiety Scale with behaviorally disturbed children.