There is a large body of literature indicating that a range of social–cognitive variables, and especially deficits in these areas, are associated with aggression (e.g., Bradshaw, Rodgers, Ghandour, & Garbarino, 2009; Calvete & Orue, 2011; Pettit & Mize, 2007). For example, SIP theory suggests that aggressive youth demonstrate SIP deficits in encoding social cues, interpreting these cues (often misinterpreting others’ intentions as being hostile and on purpose, termed a hostile attributional bias), selecting social goals (e.g., they are more likely to have goals of being dominant or seeking revenge), generating alternative solutions within social conflict situations, evaluating potential alternative solutions, and enacting behaviors (Crick & Dodge, 1994; Vasey, Dalgleish, & Silverman, 2003). Of the social processing steps mentioned above, the hostile attributional bias (Step 2, interpretations) has received the most attention, possibly owing to research suggesting that it is associated with the development and maintenance of aggression and violence (de Castro, Veerman, Koops, Bosch, & Monshouwer, 2002). As a result, the development of interventions to address aggression among youth have often focused on social–cognitive retraining, especially emphasizing the importance of helping these at-risk youth more accurately interpret others’ intentions (Second Step: Frey, Nolen, Van Schoiack Edstrom, & Hirsch-stein, 2005; Friend to Friend: Leff et al., 2007, 2009; Preventing Relational Aggression in Schools Everyday: Leff, Waasdorp, et al., 2010; Coping Power Program: Lochman & Wells, 2003, 2004). Further, a recent study demonstrated that a more general knowledge of SIP steps and anger management is also associated with decreases in aggression (Leff, Cassano, MacEvoy, & Costigan, 2010). Although the relationships between social cognitions and aggression have been heavily researched (e.g., Bradshaw et al., 2009; Calvete & Orue, 2011; Pettit & Mize, 2007), the majority of studies have not been conducted in the context of an urban, impoverished community composed of minority youth. Thus, this is one of the main goals for the present manuscript.

Children’s general beliefs about aggression and violence is another critical social–cognitive variable to examine, especially among urban ethnic minority youth. These high-risk individuals are often exposed to high rates of violence within these neighborhoods, combined with a high percentage of single-parent homes, poverty, and limited resources, resulting in minority children being especially vulnerable to further violence, drug use, and gang involvement as they get older (Stoddard, Henly, Sieving, & Bolland, 2011; Teitelman et al., 2010). In addition, many researchers have described urban violence among African American males as being related to a combination of complex factors including attitudes and behaviors that are part of their sociocultural context (Bennett & Fraser, 2000). For instance, Bennett and Fraser indicate that perceived violations of respect like making eye contact for a split second too long and/or appearing to be scared or afraid within urban high-risk communities can reinforce a belief structure that values aggression and appearing tough in front of one’s peer group. Many factors may contribute to urban adolescent minority youth developing beliefs in the importance of responding with aggression when faced with conflict, in order to prevent others from thinking they are “soft” or “cowardly.” These include being reinforced by peers and parents who strongly value standing up for oneself and may not value as much more traditionally appropriate social participation (Fraser, 1996). In addition, children exposed to urban high-risk neighborhoods and schools may have peers who reinforce their aggressive responding toward others. In the current study, we wished to better understand whether youths’ general beliefs about the use of aggression and violence would be related to aggressive behavior, above and beyond the previously demonstrated relationships between hostile attributional bias and general knowledge of SIP steps and aggression.

Another set of important variables that have been shown to be associated with aggression and violence include indices of emotional distress and peer victimization. At a conceptual level, SIP theory posits not only that aggressive youth experience deficits at each SIP step but also that emotional processing is involved at each decision making step. Research also suggests that victims of peer aggression and violence experience a host of short- and long-term negative consequences. For instance, victims often exhibit a range of internalizing difficulties, including depression (Arseneault et al., 2006; Reijntjes, Kamphuis, Prinzie, Boelen, & Telch, 2011), loneliness and social anxiety (Juvonen & Graham, 2001), peer relationship difficulties (Hodges & Perry, 1999), and later psychological maladjustment and school problems (Graham, Bellmore, & Mize, 2006). In addition, peer victimization has also been related to increased rates of aggression and delinquency (e.g., Khatri, Kupersmidt, & Patterson, 2000; Kochenderfer-Ladd, 2003). While the majority of these studies have examined the effects of being a victim of overt aggression, more recent studies also suggest that being a victim of relational aggression is associated with a range of negative co-morbidities, including an increased risk for exhibiting relationally aggressive behaviors (Sullivan, Farrell, & Kliewer, 2006). Specifically, Sullivan et al. found that being the victim of overt aggression was associated with high levels of overtly and relationally aggressive behaviors and delinquency for urban predominately African American eighth graders. Further, being the victim of relational aggression was associated with high levels of overt aggression and drug use for girls and high levels of relational aggression among boys. Some have speculated that peer victims may have limited and largely unproductive peer interactions, making them more likely to retaliate against their peers (Hanish & Guerra, 2002).

The level of distress one feels when faced with a peer conflict could influence the likelihood of displaying aggressive behaviors and may also be associated with the form (e.g., relational or overt) of conflict. Preliminary research has supported this. Crick et al. (2002) found that youth who frequently perpetrate relational aggression (e.g., excluding peers) demonstrate more emotional distress in relational as opposed to instrumental conflicts (e.g., being bumped from behind). In contrast, those frequently involved in overt/instrumental conflict situations demonstrate greater distress in overt conflict as compared to relational conflict situations. Despite this potential link between emotional distress and aggressive responding, additional research is needed to better understand the association between emotional distress and peer conflict and aggression. As such, this is one of the goals of the current paper.

The association between social–cognitive variables and aggression, and between feelings of distress/victimization and aggression can be explained by the SIP theoretical framework, but there are additional malleable positive variables that are also associated with aggression. Although there is not as strong of a theoretical rationale for these variables’ association with aggression, prior research has demonstrated that these types of positive factors, often thought of as being protective and resilient features, are important in interventions addressing aggression. In addition, given that community stakeholders involved in our recent research indicated that they felt that many of the traditional aggression prevention programs did not adequately address leadership and community involvement, we thought that this set of prosocial variables may address a relative gap in the literature base.

Numerous studies have examined the association between overall self-esteem and a range of both positive and negative characteristics, generally finding that high self-esteem is related to positive physical and mental health, whereas low-esteem is related to delinquency, oppositional behavior, and substance abuse (e.g., Donnellan, Trzesniewski, & Robins, 2005, 2011; Fergusson & Horwood, 2002; Greenberg, 2008; Weber & Robinson Kurpius, 2011). For example, a series of studies using multiple-method, multiple-informant measures of self-esteem and externalizing problems (aggressive behavior, delinquency, and antisocial behavior) concluded that low self-esteem and a range of externalizing behaviors were associated at a small to moderate effect size (Donnellan et al., 2005), even after controlling for a range of potential confounding variables, including socioeconomic status, IQ, parent–child relationship, and peer relationships. Another study found that adolescents with lower self-esteem were at increased risk for physical and mental health difficulties, economic hardship, and being convicted of a crime as an adult (Trzesniewski, Donnellan, & Moffitt, 2006). Thus, the literature suggests that self-esteem may also be associated with aggressive behavior. At the same time, there are other areas that influence self-esteem that require examination, especially among minority youth. Specifically, community engagement and leadership self-efficacy have been shown to be an important aspect of positive social development among minority youth (e.g., Hull, Kilbourne, Reece, & Husaini, 2008), though few studies have simultaneously examined whether indices of community engagement and leadership self-efficacy are associated with reduced aggression.

Moreover, although programming to reduce aggressive youth behaviors often includes modules to improve self-esteem (Allen-Meares, Montgomery, & Kim, 2013), it often lacks explicit mechanisms for increasing community engagement and enhancing self-efficacy in leadership (Edwards, 2001). This is somewhat surprising given research suggesting positive associations between youth empowerment and positive social and emotional development (Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2002). The lack of emphasis on constructs such as community involvement and leadership in traditional aggression prevention programs has led some researchers to speculate that aggression prevention programs may be less than optimally effective, in part because they are not directly addressing mechanisms for helping youth become more accountable leaders within their schools and neighborhoods (Edwards, 2001). This may be especially relevant for urban minority youth given research showing that in order for aggression programs to be most effective, they should emphasize the promotion of community involvement and leadership (Leff, Thomas, et al., 2010). Although additional research supports these general findings by indicating that one’s feelings of empowerment and sense of responsibility are related to positive youth outcomes (Gullan, Power, & Leff, 2013), the relationship between these prosocial predictors and youth aggression has not been examined in the context of aggression prevention programming, especially for urban ethnic minority youth. As such, in the current study, we wished to better understand whether youths’ perspective of their own community involvement and leadership effectiveness were related to aggressive behavior, and whether these relationships contributed to the prediction of aggression above and beyond self-esteem. If so, these relationships have important implications for the development and adaptation of aggression prevention programs to support minority youth living in impoverished community settings.

In the current study, we wished to examine several areas that have largely been understudied in the context of African American adolescents within urban community settings. We first hypothesized an association between the social–cognitive variables and a composite score of aggression (combined subscales of youth- and parent-reported overt aggression, externalizing behaviors, and relational aggression),² in which we expected more hostile attributional bias, less general knowledge of SIP and anger management, and more broad beliefs about aggression and violence to be associated with more aggressive behavior. Further, we explored the hypothesis that general knowledge of SIP and beliefs about aggression and violence would add significantly to the prediction of aggression, above and beyond the contributions of a hostile attributional bias. Second, we hypothesized that rates of overt and relational victimization and feelings of distress in social situations would be positively related to rates of aggression. We also conducted post hoc analyses to investigate whether victimization and distress contributed separately and uniquely to the model. Third, we hypothesized that a range of prosocial factors (self-esteem, community involvement, and leadership efficacy) would be negatively associated with aggression. We also wished to explore follow-up analyses to determine whether perceptions of community involvement and leadership efficacy significantly added to the prediction of aggressive behavior after accounting for self-esteem.

Following SIP theory and also given that much prior research has examined social–cognitive factors and their association with aggression, we wished to introduce the social–cognitive set of variables prior to the other domains (i.e., victimization/emotional distress and prosocial factors) in our hierarchical regression analyses. Next, we chose to include the victimization and distress variables because emotional distress/processing is often closely related to the social–cognitive variables. For example, the SIP steps include emotional processing at each step; therefore, we thought conceptually that this set of variables should be entered next in the model. Finally, we wished to examine whether a set of protective and resilience factors were associated with aggression. We predicted that the victimization/emotional distress domain and the prosocial and resilience factors domain would each explain significant variability in the prediction of aggressive behavior when entered as the second and third steps within the hierarchical regression analyses.

This study is part of a larger research project involving the evaluation of a community-based youth violence prevention and leadership promotion program for 10- to 14-year-old youth in a range of after-school settings, including summer camps (Leff, Thomas, et al., 2010). The study received approval from the authors’ university institutional review board. After-school sites were identified as eligible to participate if they were located within one of the target urban neighborhoods, were not currently implementing any type of violence prevention programming, and served at least 20 youth regularly. Eligible sites then participated in an organizational assessment structured interview, which was designed by the study team of researchers and community partners in order to evaluate the match between sites and the violence prevention research program (Baker, Vaughan, Barnhart-Wilson, & Leff, 2012). The information gathered during the organizational assessment structured interview is converted to a 13-item Likert scale with a theoretical range of 13 to 39. Scores of at least 30 on the organizational assessment rating scale generally indicate an overall program structure and clear mission, a stable leadership structure, an interest in forming partnerships to prevent youth violence, and a designated point person who could serve as the on-site leader for the program.

Six eligible sites deemed good matches by scores of at least 30 on the organizational assessment were enrolled, and the violence prevention and leadership promotion program was implemented in a systematic stepped-wedge cluster randomized trial (e.g., Brown & Lilford, 2006). Once partnered with a site, all eligible 10- to 14-year-old youth³ who consistently attended the after-school program within the site were invited to enroll in the program. Youth who were outside the eligible age range, who did not speak English, or who had a developmental/physical disability making it difficult to complete assessment measures were excluded. The study, including details about the intervention, has been elaborated elsewhere (Leff, Thomas, et al., 2010).

A long history of research has demonstrated the importance of using a SIP model to better understand the development and maintenance of aggression (Crick, Grotspeter, & Bigbee, 2002; de Castro et al., 2002; Dodge & Pettit, 2003). It is not surprising that many aggression prevention programs, addressing overt and/or relational aggression, have used social–cognitive retraining strategies to help aggressive youth learn to more effectively problem solve in social situations (e.g., Hudley & Graham, 1993; Leff et al., 2009; Leff, Waasdorp, et al., 2010; Lochman & Wells, 2003). In the current study, we wished to examine whether hostile attributions and other social–cognitive variables would be predictive of aggressive behavior in our sample of urban preadolescent and adolescent youth. As predicted, the social–cognitive domain (hostile attributions, knowledge of SIP steps, and beliefs about aggression and violence) was strongly associated with a composite score of aggression. This is consistent with prior research demonstrating that measures of social problem solving and social–cognitive beliefs are strongly associated with aggression (Crick & Dodge, 1994; Linder, Werner, & Lyle, 2010). However, follow-up testing examining the individual influence of the social–cognitive variables and their association to the composite score of aggression was somewhat surprising, in that hostile attributional biases were not significantly associated with aggression. A closer examination of the literature for urban low-income minority youth may suggest some possible explanations for this. For example, some researchers have suggested that minority youth living in violent urban neighborhoods may learn to be hypervigilant in social situations in order to ensure their safety (Stevenson, 1997). Thus, a hostile attributional bias may actually serve as a protective factor in some situations that urban, ethnic minority youth may encounter. This is consistent with prior research findings that urban minority youth often experience conflict and violence in their neighborhoods regardless of their own aggression status (Buka, Stichick, Birdthistle, & Earls, 2001).

We also examined whether knowledge of SIP steps and/or beliefs about violence more generally would be positively associated with levels of aggression. One of the strongest findings from the current study was that youth who had stronger beliefs about violence (e.g., beliefs that it is appropriate to use violence to avoid appearing cowardly) were also more likely to exhibit higher levels of aggression. This is consistent with the idea that aggression in urban, violent neighborhoods makes responding to aggression in what is traditionally thought of as more prosocial manner (e.g., ignoring, walking away, or obtaining adult help) less likely and may also place a youth at even higher risk for repeated victimization. Our findings speak to the complexity of youth violence in some urban settings and challenge the widely held premise that violence prevention interventions focused solely on social–cognitive factors will be most sufficient. It appears that, at least in part, there needs to be a greater emphasis on helping to address urban youths’ beliefs about violence. This may speak to the importance of working not only with urban at-risk youth but also with parents, families, and community members who also may share these strong beliefs about the importance of aggression in violence. This is also consistent with a number of aggression prevention programs that have added parental and/or family components to their interventions (e.g., KiVa: Kärnä et al., 2011; Coping Power: Lochman & Wells, 2004; Olweus Bullying Prevention Program: Olweus & Limber, 2010).

The finding on the association between general beliefs of violence and levels of aggression may also be consistent with SIP theory. For instance, it is possible that children’s general beliefs about aggression may impact their evaluation of potential responses within social conflict situations (SIP Step 5). It also could be that they represent a particular type of social goal (SIP Step 3) such as one of self-preservation, which may influence subsequent behavioral responding.

The current study suggests that focusing on youths’ emotional responding may be another profitable avenue in aggression prevention and intervention development for urban youth. Our findings suggest that emotional distress in overtly aggressive situations, as well as being a victim of overt aggression, was associated with higher levels of aggression. This finding also speaks to the complexity of aggression in urban underresourced communities and suggests that learning to modulate and regulate one’s reaction to difficult social situations should continue to be an important emphasis within aggression intervention programs for urban, low-income minority youth. Although the SIP model features an exploration of how biological vulnerabilities, learning history, and social environment interact with a series of social and emotional processing cues to help determine behavior (Dodge & Pettit, 2003), some have articulated that this model does not focus enough attention on emotional processing (see Lemerise & Arsenio, 2000). Our findings suggest that feelings of distress and experiences of victimization, especially within the context of overtly provocative social situations, may play a critical but currently underemphasized role in aggression prevention programming for urban low-income minority youth.

Given recent research suggesting the importance of empowering youth to feel good about themselves and to become active leaders within their communities (e.g., Gullan et al., 2013; Leff, Thomas, et al., 2010), we predicted that a range of prosocial behaviors would be associated with less aggressive behavior. As hypothesized, higher levels of global self-esteem were associated with less aggression. It was notable that leadership efficacy beliefs added significantly to predictions of aggression, above and beyond self-esteem. At the same time, we were surprised that higher levels of community involvement were not related to lower levels of aggression. Perhaps, it is more important to view oneself as an effective leader in one’s community as opposed to being merely involved in activities within one’s neighborhood. When one views oneself as a leader, it may be easier to feel more invested and actively engaged within the neighborhood, and thereby less aggression is exhibited within this context. Although more research in this area is needed, our preliminary results suggest that building youths’ self-confidence and providing supportive opportunities for demonstrating leadership may be extremely important components of aggression prevention programs for urban minority youth. This is consistent with recent qualitative research in which urban community residents suggested that involving youth in leadership roles within their neighborhoods was a key ingredient in violence prevention programming (Hausman et al., 2009).

We were surprised that relational victimization and distress were not associated with our composite measure of aggression. Past research suggested that these relational variables would likely be predictors of aggression (e.g., Hanish & Guerra, 2002; Sullivan et al., 2006). It could be that overt forms of victimization and distress are more salient among urban adolescent minority youth than are relational variables, thereby explaining the pattern of findings in our study. However, given the high correlations between overt and relational victimization, it is possible that when both are placed in the model, the strong associations between overt victimization and overall aggression may mask an association between relational victimization/distress and relational aggression. This appears to be the case in the current study, when only examining the relational variables and a relational aggression composite. Replicating findings suggesting the importance of overt victimization and distress in the predictions of aggression among urban African American youth would be extremely important.

We made several methodological choices in the current study that likely impacted study results. We chose to construct an aggression composite score based upon eight different sub-scales from various youth- and caregiver-report indices of overt aggression, externalizing behaviors, and relational aggression. We chose to use this composite measure because much prior research has focused solely on overt aggression (e.g., Samson, Ojanen, & Hollo, 2012). We also considered forming two different aggression composite scores, one for overt aggression and externalizing behaviors and another for relational aggression. However, our initial analyses did not demonstrate notable differences on primary outcomes between these two potential dimensions, leading us to utilize an overall aggression composite score. Nevertheless, it is possible that because six of the eight subscales used in the composite were more consistent with overt aggression and externalizing behaviors than with relational aggression, our composite measure may not have been sensitive enough to identify concerns related to relational aggression. In addition, study results may also have differed if we had used peer- or teacher-reported indices of aggression, which are commonly used in school-based research. However, when working within a high-risk after-school and community-based setting there is typically less access to teachers and peers than when carrying out research in the context of the schools. It was for this reason, in part, that we decided to utilize a multiple-informant, multiple-method composite score of aggression that combined youth and parent reports. Nevertheless, future research would benefit from replicating study results across a wider range of informants.

There were several limitations in our study. First, although we are confident that our sample demographics are similar across cohorts, the lack of caregiver demographic data collected on the first cohort makes it difficult to characterize them with certainty. A second limitation was that we found only marginal internal consistency for our index measuring youths’ beliefs about violence. Although our measure was based on a well-known and respected index (e.g., Bosworth et al., 2000; Dahlsberg et al., 1998; Espelage et al., 2000, 2001), our findings emphasizing the importance of beliefs about violence over more traditional social–cognitive measures (e.g., hostile attributional bias and knowledge of SIP steps and anger management) should be interpreted with caution and replicated with another sample. Fourth, our sample consisted of urban, African American or biracial youth (greater than 95% of the sample). Although the nature of our sample should be considered a strength for understanding associations with aggression and violence among urban African American youth, it is unclear whether our results would be applicable for settings outside of urban areas and for non-African American youth.

Overall, study results highlight the complexity of aggression when it occurs within urban, underresourced community settings serving a large number of low-income minority youth. Although we did not have data on the functions of aggression in the current study, this complexity may be further explored through an examination of the functions of aggression in future studies. It could be that peer victimization is more strongly associated with reactive aggression, and beliefs about aggression are more strongly associated with proactive aggression. Future studies of urban youth would benefit from a more nuanced exploration aggression, including an examination of the distinct functions of aggression (i.e., reactive vs. proactive) and associations with both beliefs about aggression and peer victimization. This study also emphasizes that aggression prevention programs serving the needs of high-risk urban youth from these settings need to include intervention components beyond traditional SIP, such as discussions or activities addressing youths’ underlying beliefs that support violence. In addition, results suggest that aggression prevention programs serving youth within these settings should also address prosocial behaviors such as self-esteem and opportunities to promote leadership, while at the same time helping youth learn to better modulate their emotions and feelings of distress in challenging social situations. Our study fills a critical gap in the literature base, by carefully examining a range of factors that may be associated with aggressive behavior for urban adolescent youth and by shedding light on several understudied variables (e.g., leadership efficacy) that have not been traditionally focused upon in the development of aggression prevention programs for youth. As our field continues to progress, it will be important to consider the importance of making cultural adaptations to aggression intervention programs for low-income urban minority youth, especially involving opportunities and support to help build the leadership skills of these at-risk and resilient youth.