Reducing Aggressive Tendencies among Adolescents through Social-Cognitive Intervention: A Step towards Promoting Peace

Dysfunctional Aggression among adolescents is a growing problem worldwide which is detrimental for the development of peaceful society at large. “Florida School Shooting’ is one of the recent evidence of the devastating outcome of aggressive behavioural tendencies. Thus, it is the need of the hour to devise intervention plans for this behavioural problem. Individual differences in aggression are attributed to a wide range of factors. Among others, Impulsivity, Emotional Susceptibility, Narcissism, Irritability and Hostile Attribution of Intent (HAI) are consistent predictors of aggression. Individuals high on these traits generate aggressive, ineffective solutions to social problems than peers who scores low on these traits. The present study was carried out to modify these behavioural tendencies by applying social cognitive intervention (SCI). A total of 313 participants with the mean age of 13.60 years were administered Aggression Questionnaire (Buss & Perry, 1992) and 126 participants scoring high on aggression were screened in and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The Experimental group was given a 6-session SCI. The intervention mainly focused on modifying cognitions and information processing style of aggressive adolescents. After SCI, all the aggressive individuals, both in experimental and control groups were administered questionnaires measuring aggression, hostile attribution of intent, irritability, impulsivity, emotional susceptibility & narcissism. Significant reduction in maladaptive behavioural tendencies has been observed among participants in experimental group as compared to control group. For adolescents at risk, social cognitive intervention may hold a promise to modify aggressive tendencies and promoting peace in the society.
Keywords: Aggression, Social Cognitive Intervention.