ATTRIBUTIONS FOR SOCIAL FAILURE AND ADOLESCENT AGGRESSION

In the present study, 119 high school boys and 79 institutionalized de linquent boys of the same age range were assessed on their own aggress ive behavior and on their tendencies to attribute social failure to co ntrollable, external, stable causes, anticipate a hostile affective re sponse, and endorse aggressive behavioral responses to hypothetical so cial situations. While the two populations of boys did not differ dete ctably in their attributional tendencies, the relations between an ind ividual's aggressiveness and an individual's attributions differed con siderably across the two populations. In particular, among delinquent but not among nondelinquent boys, the tendency to attribute one's soci al failures to stable and controllable causes predicted stronger hosti le emotional responses to failure and a tendency to endorse physically aggressive responses following such failure. These hostile emotional responses to failure and this preference for a physically aggressive r esponse, in turn, predicted greater actual aggression within the popul ation of delinquent boys. Neither of these links could be demonstrated for nondelinquent boys. However, in the nondelinquent sample, attribu ting social failure to external and controllable causes predicted endo rsement of aggressive responses only indirectly through increased host ile affect. It was concluded that the specific relations between cogni tive and affective responses to social failure may be a contributing f actor to the serious physical aggression displayed by some delinquents and to the less serious aggression of nondelinquents. (C) 1993 Wiley- Liss. Inc.