Affective Style And Aggressive Behavior In Adolescents

Emotional system is a very important mental processing system for individuals and the organizer of other mental activities. It is a very important motivational factor, and can serve for individual's survival and social adaptations. Different affective style of individuals, including different emotional reactivity and emotion-regulation, can change adaptive means of individual. And faulty and default emotional reactivity and emotion-regulation can lead to poor adaptation. Aggressive behavior, especially physical aggression and violence, is an aberrant form of behavior that can bring about harm to the body and mind of others. The causes of aggressive behavior are very complex, involving social environmental causes, and biological and psychological ones. Regarding individual psychological causes, there are cognitive components, personality and emotion factors. But experimental studies concerning the effects of emotional reactivity and emotion-regulation on aggressive behavior are few, which call for more comprehensive researches. Therefore, through psychological measurements, emotional physiology and neuroscience method, based on the theory of emotional function for individual adaptation, and theory of affective style, the current study aimed at exploring the effects of different affective styles such as emotional reactivity and emotion-regulation on the aggressive behaviors in adolescents and especially at examining characteristics of affective styles of adolescents with severe physical aggressive behaviors.(l)The result of psychological measurements indicated: Feeling of anger, venting level of students (in Gongdu schools) with severe physical aggressive behaviors were higher than normal students, but their feeling of fear and sadness, and emotion-regulation ability were lower than normal students. Venting level of students (in average middle school) with physical aggressive behaviors (by peer nominated) was higher than normal students. State anger, trait anger, and anger expression of students (in Gongdu Schools) with severe physical aggressive behaviors were higher than normal students, but anger control was lower than normal students. State anger, trait anger, and anger expression of students with physical aggressive behaviors (by peer nominated) were higher than normal students. Anger expression of students with relational aggressive behaviors (by peer nominated) was higher than normalstudents. In sum, feeling of fear and sadness, and emotion-regulation ability of students with aggressive behaviors, especially with severe physical aggressive behaviors were low, but their anger and venting level were high. Thus, adolescents with high level of anger, high venting level, and low level of fear and sadness, and emotion-regulation ability are at risk for aggression and violence.(2) The result of emotional physiology study indicated: There was significant difference between students (in Gongdu schools) with severe physical aggressive behaviors and normal students on the baseline of physiological activation such as finger temperature, R-R interval, heart rate and finger pulse rate. Finger temperatures, heart rates and finger pulse rates of students (in Gongdu schools) with severe physical aggressive behaviors were lower than those of normal students and their R-R interval was longer than that of normal students. Significant difference of average changes in terms of skin conductance existed between students (in Gongdu schools) with severe physical aggressive behaviors and normal students when they watched film's clips eliciting disgust and fear. Specifically, the skin conductance level of normal students increased and that of students (in Gongdu schools) with severe physical aggressive behaviors decreased. The trends of skin conductance changes of these two groups of students appeared differently in terms of time. The skin conductance level of students (in Gongdu schools) with severe physical aggressive behaviors reached the peak amplitude 15-20 seconds after the film's clips presented and that of normal students reached the...