The emotion perception bias contributes to the aggressive behaviors in Hong Kong adolescents

Abstract

Objectives: This study investigated four aspects of young aggressive adolescents’ social cognition, with special attention given to: (1) broadening the definition of aggression to include emotion; (2) narrowing the definition of social information processing (SIP) database to focus on only its emotion knowledge ‘database’; (3) examining patterns of association between aggression and the SIP database in adolescents; and (4) examining individual differences in processing patterns at various steps of empathic understanding.

Methods: Participants were 1430 secondary school Form 1 to 3 students, from four schools (one Band 1, one Band 2, and two Band 3 schools) in Hong Kong. All the participants completed questionnaires that measure their aggressive score and their reactive and proactive scores. Of the 1430 participants, only those who were classified as aggressors by the clinical cutoff point were interviewed with a set of structured questions (N=84).

Results: The results showed that male, Form 3, and Band 3 students displayed more deficits in processing social information than other adolescents in the aggressors group. They showed more aggressive behaviors and responded more emotionally to adverse conditions. Reactive, proactive, and reactive and proactive aggressors exhibited deficits in almost every step of the SIP, but each failed in a different step of the SIP cycle. No significant interaction effect was found among Banding, Form, and Gender on any of the group.

Discussion: It appears to be possible to broaden adolescents’ social knowledge and change the way they process social information and make decisions. The findings suggest that prevention and intervention programs can strengthen social-emotional skills and produce significant changes in peer-related behavior.