Childhood aggression and gender: a new look at an old problem.

Abstract

Because of its deleterious effects on individuals and society, and the important role that it has been given in several theories of human behavior (e.g., psychoanalytic theory, social learning theory; Freud, 1930; Bandura & Walters, 1959; Bandura, 1986), aggression has been one of the most widely researched topics in the past several decades. Although many important advances have been made in our understanding of aggressive behavior, most of this knowledge has been gained through the study of aggressive males only (Crick & Dodge, 1994; Parke, 1992; Robins, 1986) and through the study of forms of aggression that are more characteristic of males than of females (i.e., physical forms of aggression). Not surprisingly, this approach to the study of aggressive behavior has fostered the stereotype of females as nonaggressive (Bjorkvist & Niemela, 1992). Or, in the words of Mother Goose, women and girls have been viewed as "sugar and spice and everything nice."