Aggression and peer relationships: The moderating role of personality factors for children at school stage from 8 to 10 years old

Abstract

The current study has analysed the predictive role for different types of aggressions in peer relationship and the moderating effect of personality on these relationships in boys and girls. This is a pre-study which has included up to 54 Spanish children (46.3% boys and 53.7% girls) with the age range from 8 to 10 years old (M=9.07 and SD=.75). In order to analyze these relations multiple linear regressions were applied. For boys as for girls, the rejection was predicted by the direct aggression, but only in the case of girls the direct aggression had a negative effect on the social preference. For boys, friendship was damaged by physical aggression and by verbal aggression in girls; however these indirect aggression makes come up new friend relationships in girls. Conscientiousness was revealed as a moderating factor of these relationships for all participants; also just for girls, emotional stability has moderated the contribution of physical aggression on rejection.