Relational aggression in an interpersonal framework

Much like overt aggression, two functional types of relational aggression have been identified: instrumental and reactive. Though popular in the overt aggression literature, there seems to be a paucity of research into this functional type distinction in relational aggression. Additionally, though relational aggression occurs within an interpersonal setting, there appears to be no research examining relational aggression using a framework of interpersonal theory. The purpose of this study was to explore the distinction between the instrumental and reactive functions of relational aggression with regard to perpetrators. This study sought to identify differences between instrumental and reactive relationally aggressive individuals with respect to their interpersonal behavior toward individual peers and their peer group in socially threatening, ambiguous and innocuous situations. It was hypothesized that reactive relational aggression would be linked to an affiliative interpersonal style of behaving with regard to their peer group in certain situations while instrumental relational aggression would be tied to a more dominant interpersonal style overall. The participants were 193 undergraduates from Arizona State University. Participants completed self-report measures of relational aggression and interpersonal style. The data were analyzed using hierarchical linear regressions. Results in general did not bear out the hypotheses proposed in this study, though a distinction between reactive relational aggression and instrumental relational aggression in innocuous situations was found.