SERIOUS AND PLAYFUL AGGRESSION IN BRAZILIAN GIRLS AND BOYS

We report on an observational study on sex differences in serious and playful aggression in early childhood. The sample included 14 girls an d 14 boys, aged 2 to 4. The study was carried out in Porto Alegre, Bra zil. Half of the subjects attended a nursery school for children from a favela (slum district); the others attended a nursery school that wa s run by a local university and represented the life conditions of the middle class of the Brazilian society. Each of the children was obser ved at school for 3 hours (divided into 12-15 minutes episodes) throug h a focal sampling technique. Significant sex differences are found fo r the frequency of playful aggression for both the actor's and the ''v ictim's'' part of the aggressive act, but for the actor's role the eff ect holds only for the middle class setting. There are also tremendous differences between the frequencies of serious aggression in girls an d some of the boys, although the effect is not statistically significa nt. When several types of aggression are compared, it becomes evident that sex differences are restricted to bullying (dominant aggression). The rates of instrumental and reactive aggression are similar in both sexes. Girls and boys from the favela setting do not differ in the re lative importance of the different types of serious aggression, but in middle class children the proportion of acts of bullying is much high er in boys than in girls.