J Youth Adolescence DOI 10.1007/s10964-015-0298-9

EMPIRICAL RESEARCH

Aggressive and Prosocial? Examining Latent Profiles of Behavior, Social Status, Machiavellianism, and Empathy Christian Berger1 • Milena Batanova2 • Jessica Duncan Cance3

Received: 7 February 2015 / Accepted: 27 April 2015 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Abstract The present study tests whether aggression and prosocial behavior can coexist as part of a socially functional and adaptive profile among early adolescents. Using a person-centered approach, the study examined early adolescents’ likelihood of being classified into profiles involving aggressive and prosocial behavior, social status (popular, liked, cool), machiavellianism, and both affective and cognitive components of empathy (empathic concern and perspective taking, respectively). Participants were 1170 early adolescents (10–12 years of age; 52 % male) from four schools in metropolitan Santiago, Chile. Through latent profile analysis, three profiles emerged (normativelow aggressive, high prosocial-low aggressive, and high aggressive-high popular status). Both empathic concern and perspective taking were higher in the high prosociallow aggressive profile, whereas the high aggressive-high popular status profile had the lowest scores on both empathy components as well as machiavellianism. No profile emerged where aggressive and prosocial behaviors were found to co-exist, or to be significantly above the mean. The results underscore that aggressive behavior is highly contextual and likely culturally specific, and that the study & Christian Berger [email protected] Milena Batanova [email protected] Jessica Duncan Cance [email protected] 1

Escuela de Psicologia, Pontificia Universidad Cato´lica de Chile, Av. Vicun˜a Mackenna 4860, Macul, 7820436 Santiago, Chile

2

Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA

3

The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

of behavioral profiles should consider social status as well as socio-emotional adjustment indicators. These complex associations should be taken into consideration when planning prevention and intervention efforts to reduce aggression or school bullying and to promote positive peer relationships. Keywords Aggression
Prosocial
Social status
Machiavellianism
Empathy
Perspective taking

Introduction Aggressive and prosocial behaviors have been among the most studied topics in developmental psychology during the last several decades. Increasingly, studies demonstrate that aggressive and prosocial behaviors are intimately embedded in social relationships, playing functional roles within the peer ecology (Berger and Rodkin 2012; Molano et al. 2013; Rodkin et al. 2013; Sijtsema et al. 2009). Social status has, therefore, received much attention, namely the roles of social preference and perceived popularity. Both indicators of social status have been found to be associated positively with prosocial behaviors (Wentzel and Asher 1995; Peters et al. 2010; Warden and MacKinnon 2003), whereas the associations with aggression appear to be more complex. That is, aggressive adolescents are generally disliked by their peers but also are perceived (either by themselves or their peers) as popular and powerful (Cillessen and Borch 2006; Juvonen et al. 2013; Mayeux and Cillessen 2008). Beyond measures of popularity and perceived preference, perceptions of peer coolness, an attribute that appropriately addresses high status within the adolescent culture (Pountain and Robins 2000), have also been associated with aggression (Rodkin et al. 2006).

123

J Youth Adolescence

From an evolutionary or social dominance perspective, the likelihood of a certain behavior to be displayed is related to the costs and benefits associated with that behavior. Studies following this perspective have shown that aggression may serve adaptive functions by positioning adolescents in higher hierarchical positions and establishing a ‘‘pecking order’’ (Juvonen and Galvan 2008; Phillips 2003; Potocnjak et al. 2011). Unlike previous studies alluding to aggression as maladaptive and characteristic of social incompetence (Crick and Dodge 1994; Rubin et al. 1993; Werner and Crick 2004), studies increasingly demonstrate that aggressive and prosocial behaviors may be displayed concurrently among well-adjusted, socially competent adolescents (see Hawley 2003, 2006; Wargo et al. 2011). For instance, Hawley’s resource control theory (1999) proposes that both direct and indirect means of control may be used to achieve successful social competition and positive adjustment. Direct means refer to antisocial behaviors (e.g., aggression; ‘‘I often bully or push others to do what I want’’), whereas indirect means refer to cooperative strategies (e.g., prosociality; ‘‘I influence others by being really nice about it’’). Thus, whereas earlier studies from the social status literature have generally examined how popularity and social preference are differentially linked to aggressive versus prosocial behaviors (Veenstra 2006), studies from the social dominance and resource control perspectives propose that both aggression and prosocial behavior may co-exist because they share similar social functions (also see Hawley 2006, 2007). Extending previous research, the current study sought to examine whether aggressive and prosocial behaviors can co-exist among youth who receive positive peer nominations of social status (popular, well-liked, and cool) and who also self-report as socially adjusted (machiavellian, showing empathy). The reasons for this approach are twofold. First, most studies tend to examine social status by calculating total scores of popularity (most popular–least popular nominations) and social preference (most liked– least liked nominations), assuming that both positive and negative nominations lie on a continuum. However, dyadic approaches (Erath et al. 2009; Veenstra et al. 2010) have shown that positive and negative dimensions of popularity and likeability are not mutually exclusive. For instance, aggressive adolescents can be considered popular by some peers, but also unpopular by others, resulting in a composed score close to the mean and equivalent to an adolescent who is neither popular nor unpopular. In this sense, and following a social dominance perspective, the current study focuses on positive nominations of popularity, likeability and coolness, to gauge the social functionality that aggressive and prosocial behaviors may have. Second, we were interested in how constructs often cited as social competence or adjustment indicators fit within the

123

configurations of social status and aggressive/prosocial behaviors. Rather than assuming that positive indicators of adjustment need to predict or precede aggressive/prosocial behaviors, we wanted to examine their co-occurrence given that these characteristics function together in one’s point in development. To do this, we used a person-centered approach, latent profile analysis, to assess the probability of young adolescents falling into a given profile of aggressive/ prosocial behavior along with positive social status and social competence or adjustment indicators. Specifically, machiavellianism has been described as a personal orientation to others in which certain behaviors (Andreou 2004) are used functionally to achieve personal goals (and have been associated with social status, particularly during early adolescence; Wargo et al. 2011). Thus, individuals who exhibit machiavellianism may also exhibit both aggressive and prosocial behaviors, although limited evidence supports their co-occurrence. By contrast, empathy is considered the cornerstone of positive social, emotional, and moral development and is usually associated with prosocial behavior (e.g., see Eisenberg et al. 2010). However, certain aspects of empathy, like perspective taking (and theory of mind), have also been related to the use of aggression (see Caravita et al. 2009; Gini et al. 2011). Therefore, empathy, and in particular distinguishing between its cognitive (e.g., perspective taking) and affective (e.g., empathic concern) components, may help in testing the co-occurrence of aggression and prosocial behavior along with social status dimensions. Aggression, Prosocial Behavior, and Machiavellianism Previous studies, albeit limited, have associated the strategic use of prosocial behavior with the strategic use of aggressive behavior. For instance, Hawley (2003) identified a subgroup of adolescents who showed high levels of both behaviors and labeled them bistrategic controllers. She found that these adolescents were socially central and skilled within their peer groups, arguably due to their use of strategically aggressive and prosocial behaviors that most effectively allowed them to gain and maintain a central position within the social hierarchy. This form of social dominance is delivered by combining aggressive and prosocial behaviors in order to purposefully control significant resources, such as peer attention (also see Pellegrini et al. 2011). Wargo et al. (2011) further argue that bistrategic controllers attain their instrumental goals by mitigating the negative effects of their aggressive actions by being prosocial enough; thus, these adolescents seem to be driven by both intrinsic goals of self-fulfillment, but also by extrinsic goals of power and popularity (Hawley et al. 2002; Wargo et al. 2011).

J Youth Adolescence

Bistrategic controllers have also been referred to as machiavellian (Hawley 2003; Sutton and Keogh 2001). Machiavellianism is defined as the degree to which a person feels that other people are untrustworthy and manipulable in interpersonal situations (Andreou 2004). Although she did not explicitly measure this construct, Hawley (2003) characterized the bistrategic controllers as machiavellian, who despite their aggression were also perceived to be popular and rated themselves as socially skilled (above average on agreeableness, attentiveness to social cues, and conscientiousness). Indeed, limited research has shown that aggressive individuals can be viewed as socially powerful by their peers, also characterized as machiavellian regarding their functional use of social control strategies for gaining and maintaining status (Vaillancourt et al. 2010). However, previous studies assessing machiavellianism also show inconsistent findings. For instance, Bereczkei et al. (2010) found that youth with higher degrees of machiavellianism were able to transition from altruistic to egotistic behavior only as a function of the presence of peers. Czibor and Bereczkei (2012) portrayed machiavellian college students as ambitious, flexible and adaptive to their contexts. Conversely, McHoskey (1999) showed that college students with machiavellian characteristics showed higher levels of antisocial behavior, alienation, and less interest in social themes and prosocial behaviors. These findings, along with other studies showing that bistrategic controllers represent around 15 % of the population (Chen and Chang 2012; Hawley et al. 2002), open a much needed investigation as to how machiavellianism falls within behavioral and social status profiles of youth. For instance, machiavellian adolescents are not necessarily strategic, since machiavellianism refers to a disposition towards peers, while being strategic implies social skills for effectively achieving one’s goals by understanding and dealing with social relationships. Aggression, Prosocial Behavior, and Empathy Another interesting avenue for understanding the associations between aggression, prosocial behavior and social adjustment is empathy. Generally, research shows that empathy is associated negatively with aggression and positively with prosocial behaviors (see Eisenberg et al. 2010). However, research also demonstrates that empathy is a multidimensional construct comprised of cognitive and affective components that reflect the capacity to both understand and share another’s circumstance, respectively (see Cohen and Strayer 1996; Davis 1994). Despite controversies surrounding the conceptualization and measurement of empathy (see Jolliffe and Farrington 2006; Miller and Eisenberg 1988), cognitive empathy can refer to the

apprehension or understanding of another’s perspective (e.g., perspective taking), while affective empathy can include feelings of concern or sympathy for another’s emotional state (e.g., empathic concern). With regard to the associations between aggression and empathy, studies consistently show a negative relationship with affective empathy (Batanova and Loukas 2011; de Kemp et al. 2007; Jolliffe and Farrington 2006, 2011), whereas the relationship with cognitive empathy is less clear. For instance, Jolliffe and Farrington (2006, 2011) have found no significant association between aggression and cognitive empathy in adolescents. In the literature on bullying and empathy, however, some studies have found that adolescents who bully appear to lack moral compassion but can demonstrate moral competence, or sound judgment of others’ mental states (Caravita et al. 2009; Gini 2006; Gini et al. 2011; Sutton et al. 1999). Without a sense of empathic concern, perspective taking may allow bullies to effectively manipulate their peers in order to achieve their status goals (Garandeau and Cillessen 2006). Indeed, Caravita et al. (2009) found that the link between cognitive empathy and bullying was especially strong when adolescent girls were nominated as highly popular. The authors thus suggested that perspective-taking skills could in fact be used for aggression as a function of maintaining or enhancing one’s social status (see Cillessen and Borch 2006). In another cross-sectional study by Caravita et al. (2010), theory of mind skills (the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others) were associated positively with early adolescents’ prosocial behaviors (e.g., defending victims during bullying situations). Thus, if aggressive and prosocial behaviors do co-exist, it is possible that youth who exhibit such behaviors will also exhibit perspective taking. In contrast, because affective empathy is consistently linked to low levels of aggression, it is unlikely that both aggressive and prosocial youth will see themselves as high in empathic concern. Compared to youth who are both aggressive and prosocial, those who are exclusively prosocial are more likely to show high levels of both perspective taking and empathic concern. Additionally, because prosocial behaviors have been linked to both cognitive and affective empathy (Carlo et al. 2003; Eisenberg et al. 2001; Warden and MacKinnon 2003), and being prosocial has been associated with both prominence and likeability (Peeters et al. 2010; Warden and MacKinnon 2003), it can be expected that profiles of youth who are prosocial but not aggressive will also be popular and well-liked. Behavioral/Social Status Profiles Among Early Adolescents While the limited available evidence points to varying aggressive and prosocial profiles of youth with different

123

J Youth Adolescence

social status configurations, it also contains largely variable-centered analyses focused on making associations with socio-cognitive indicators of adjustment, without much attention to emotional processes (e.g., affective empathy). For instance, Peeters et al. (2010) identified three subtypes of bullies among 8th graders based on their social status and skills: one characterized by high popularity, high social intelligence, and average machiavellianism; a second group with average levels in all attributes; and a third displaying low popularity and low social intelligence. Only a few other studies have aimed to characterize adolescent profiles based on their aggressive/prosocial behaviors along with social status and social adjustment configurations. Rodkin et al. (2000) identified two configurations according to peer perceptions of adolescent boys: the popular prosocial (cool, athletic, leader, cooperative and studious) and popular antisocial (cool, athletic, and antisocial) profiles. More recently, Berger (2011) found two distinguishable profiles of adolescents who were admired by their peers: the tough profile (highly prosocial, popular and socially prominent, and slightly aggressive and socially preferred) and the model profile (non-aggressive, highly prosocial, and slightly prominent and preferred). Recall Hawley’s (2003) study where she identified a subgroup of adolescents who were bistrategic controllers, or characterized as machiavellian; in the same study, she also found four other groups comprised of strategies for social control: coercive controllers, prosocial controllers, typicals, and non-controllers. These five groups were formed by dividing the distributions of self-report responses of both coercive and prosocial strategies into thirds (e.g., the machiavellians scored in the top 66th percentile on both dimensions), rather than following a more personcentered statistical approach to identifying adolescents’ probabilities of belonging to a given group. Hawley reported that although the prosocial controllers stood out as the most socially skilled, both prosocial and bistrategic controllers were perceived to be popular, below average on peer neglect, and rated as most socially accepted by their teachers. The bistrategic controllers were rated highest on their levels of resource control (e.g., ‘‘who is the best at getting what they want?’’), followed by the coercive and prosocial controllers. The typicals were average on most attributes, while the non-controllers were lowest on all attributes, including peer neglect and rejection, compared to all the other groups.

The Current Study Drawing from Hawley’s work and other reviewed studies, the current study sought to address some of the inconsistencies in the literature regarding the co-occurrence of

123

aggressive and prosocial behaviors as part of the same social status profile. Further, it remains unknown the extent to which social adjustment indicators, like machiavellianism and empathy, fall within configurations of aggressive/prosocial behaviors and positive nominations of social status. The literature on peer relations and social adjustment increasingly demonstrates a need for overcoming fixed notions of aggression as maladaptive and prosocial behavior as adaptive (see Arsenio and Lemerise 2004; Hawley 2006). Based on the social dominance and resource control perspectives, aggression is presumed to have some adaptive benefits. In particular, resource control theory proposes that when aggression co-occurs with prosocial behaviors, individuals demonstrate a machiavellian profile that might lead to positive social adjustment. However, other studies question whether the seemingly adaptive nature of aggression stems from its co-occurrence with prosocial behaviors or perhaps from its associations with socially constructed status structures, like being popular and deemed ‘‘cool’’ (see Berger 2011; Rodkin et al. 2006). In light of the aforementioned concerns in the literature, the research question that guides this study is whether aggressive and prosocial behaviors co-occur, when simultaneously considering several dimensions of social status and social competence or adjustment indicators. The current study uses Latent Profile Analysis (LPA), a person-centered approach to examine the probability of young adolescents falling into a given profile of aggressive/prosocial behavior along with positive social status and social competence or adjustment indicators. Although previous findings are inconsistent regarding the co-occurrence of aggressive and prosocial behavior, we expected that prosocial and aggressive behavior would not coexist in one profile when testing these along with social status dimensions. We expected this because of previous literature showing differential associations between these behaviors and varying dimensions of social status. We also expected to identify an aggressive profile with high levels of popularity and coolness, but not necessarily being liked most. Finally, we expected that aggressive behavior could co-occur with perspective taking, but not empathic concern, as well as machiavellianism. Given the mixed evidence in the literature, however, we could not make any explicit hypotheses about the nature of each profile. We also could not make any explicit hypotheses about the role of gender, particularly given mixed findings on gender differences in aggression during early adolescence (e.g., Batanova and Loukas 2011; Peets and Kikas 2006). However, we did account for gender in our analyses so as to examine whether the distribution across profiles would vary for girls and boys.

J Youth Adolescence

Methods Participants The present study is part of a larger, multi-wave longitudinal study about peer relations. Participants were 1170 fourth, fifth and sixth graders (age range = 10–12; 51.6 % males) from four schools in metropolitan Santiago, Chile, assessed during September and October 2012. Unfortunately, data pertaining to students’ or parents’ ethnicity as well as socioeconomic status could not be gathered. Regarding ethnicity, however, the ethnic composition of the Chilean society is quite homogeneous, with roughly 95 % of the population self-identifying as white (or mixed-race with European ascendancy), and only 4.6 % of the national population identifying themselves as belonging to an ethnic indigenous minority, with even a lower proportion in Santiago (Ministerio de Planificacio´n de Chile 2005). Regarding socioeconomic status, data was gathered at the school-level instead. According to the national socioeconomic classification criteria used by the Chilean national system of educational evaluation (SIMCE), two schools were of middle socioeconomic status (SES), one was middle-up, and one was middle-low SES. More specifically, the Educational Vulnerability Index (IVE) that measures the percentage of students that are considered vulnerable (based on family income, medical needs, birth weight, and residential conditions, among others) ranged from 42 to 72 % among the four schools. Parental consent allowing student participations was obtained for 79.6 % of students. Data was gathered for 73.9 % of students.

nominations, accounting for the variability in classroom size; thus, scores ranged from 0 (no nomination) to 1 (nominations by all classmates) for each student on each descriptor. Scores were then z-standardized. Means and standard deviations and range for each construct (raw scores) are presented in Table 1. Aggressive Behavior To assess aggression, participants nominated their classmates on four peer descriptors: ‘‘He/she starts fights,’’ ‘‘Gets in problems,’’ ‘‘Makes fun about others,’’ and ‘‘Ignores others’’. Prosocial Behavior Participants were asked to nominate their classmates who, in their opinion, fit two descriptors: ‘‘He/she is kind to others’’ and ‘‘He/she cooperates’’. Popularity Perceived popularity refers to visibility and social prominence. Participants nominated classmates that they considered the most popular in their classroom. Likeability Participants were asked to nominate their classmates with whom they would like the most to spend time with. Coolness

Measures Standard peer nominations procedures (see Berger and Rodkin 2012; Cillessen and Mayeux 2004) were used to assess aggression, prosocial behavior, and social status (popularity, likeability, and coolness). Peer nominations are widely used in studies assessing children and adolescent characteristics and particularly social status and social behaviors, tackling at the peers’ consensus regarding each classmate profile (Li and Wright 2014). On a roster listing all classmates’ names, participants were asked to check the names of their classmates who best fit several descriptors. Nominations were unlimited, and participants could nominate boys and girls. All self-nominations were removed prior to analysis. In the present study the whole classroom list was provided to participants to avoid nominations on recall, which may favor nominations towards the most visible (i.e., popular) students. Participants’ scores for each descriptor were calculated as a proportion of nominations received over the maximum potential

Participants nominated their classmates who they perceived as the most cool (in Spanish, baca´n) within their classroom. Machiavellianism The self-report Kiddie Mach Scale (Christie and Geis 1970) including 20 items with a 5-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly disagree to 5 = Strongly agree) was used. Sample items include: ‘‘The best way to get along with others is telling them things that make them happy,’’ ‘‘Sometimes it is ok to lie to get what one wants,’’ and ‘‘It is smart to be kind to important people even if you really dislike them’’. The structure of the scale is unclear, because some literature supports a single factor dimensionality of the scale (Allsopp et al. 1991), but Sutton and Keogh (2001) identified three subscales: lack of faith in human nature, dishonesty, and distrust. Using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with the 20 items, the initial solution did

123

J Youth Adolescence Table 1 Correlations, descriptive statistics, and profile means for all study variables (n = 880) 1

2

1. Aggression

–

2. Prosocial

-.38**

3

4

5

6

.44**

.12**

4. Likeability

-.11**

.43**

.50**

.46**

.08**

.87**

– .50**

–

.01

.06

-.00

–

6. Machiavellianism

-.13**

.08*

7. Empathic concern

-.17**

.21**

-.01

.11*

-.01

.31**

8. Perspective taking

-.20**

.20**

-.04

.09**

-.04

.34**

Mean (SD) Minimum

.17 (.17) 0

8

–

3. Popularity 5. Coolness

7

.20 (.15) 0

Maximum Profile 1 means

.80 -0.57***

.84 -0.21

Profile 2 means

-0.90***

2.89***

Profile 3 means

3.41***

-0.99***

.27 (.21) 0 .90 -0.20*** 0.36 0.71***

.28 (.14)

.19 (.17)

0

0

.71 0.00

.83 -0.17**

0.51** -0.31***

0.25 0.67***

– – .57**

–

3.68 (.58)

3.40 (.88)

3.33 (.94)

1.00

1.00

1.00

7.00 0.04

5.00 -0.01

5.00 0.02

0.07

0.35*

0.29**

-0.26*

-0.41***

-0.44***

Variables 1 through 5 were z-standardized. The profile means are based on LPA with the whole sample (N = 1170) * p \ .05; ** p \ .01; *** p \ .001

not show an adequate fit [v2(170) = 588.50, CFI = .66, RMSEA = .06]. We then investigated the dimensionality of the scale by performing an exploratory factor analysis (extraction method: principal axis factoring; rotation method: oblimin), which confirmed unidimensionality. Going back to the original CFA, we then removed items based on item loadings and modification indices. A reduced version including 14 items showed good fit [v2(75) = 146.00, CFI = .91, RMSEA = .03] (excluded items available upon request). Consistent with previous studies using this scale with adolescents (e.g., Cronbach’s alpha = 0.62 in Andreou 2004), the reduced 14-item scale showed moderate internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = .66) in the present study.

disagreement before I make a decision’’, ‘‘I believe that there are two sides to every question and try to look at them both’’, and ‘‘When I’m upset at someone, I usually try to ‘‘put myself in his shoes’’ for a while’’, and ‘‘Before criticizing somebody, I try to imagine how I would feel if I were in their place’’) and four items for empathic concern (‘‘I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me’’, ‘‘When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel kind of protective towards them’’, ‘‘I am often quite touched by things that I see happen’’, and ‘‘I would describe myself as a pretty soft-hearted person’’). Internal consistency reliabilities for the revised cognitive and affective subscales were 0.64 and 0.57, respectively. Procedure

Empathy The Interpersonal Reactivity Index IRI (Davis 1980, 1983) was used to assess both components of empathy. The IRI includes 28 items on a 5-point Likert scale (0 = Not at all like you to 4 = Very much like you) and includes four subscales: perspective taking, fantasy, empathic concern, and personal distress. For the present study, CFAs were performed to check the structure of the scale. Initial analyses with the two subscales of interest (perspective taking and empathic concern) did not show adequate fit indices [v2(65) = 532.12, CFI = .67, RMSEA = .09]. A much better fit was found [v2(19) = 49.12, CFI = .96, RMSEA = .042] by selecting items based on their item loadings and modification indices, including only four items for perspective taking (‘‘I try to look at everybody’s side of a

123

Surveys were completed during regular class hours, taking approximately 45 min per classroom. All instruments and procedures were approved by the Institutional Review Board of the local university and by the Comisio´n Nacional de Investigacio´n Cientı´fica y Tecnolo´gica de Chile (CONICYT), in order to meet research ethical standards. Participants were assured that their answers would be kept confidential and that they could stop participating at any time. During the survey, participants answered the questionnaire individually, while trained administrators provided mobile monitoring and assisted participants as needed. Measures that were originally in English (Machiavellianism and Empathy) were translated into Spanish and cross-validated by staff members of the participating institution.

J Youth Adolescence

Analytical Strategy Latent profile analysis was used to determine subgroups of adolescents who were similar to one another in their peer nominations of aggressive and prosocial behaviors, social status (popularity, likeability and coolness), as well selfreported machiavellianism and empathy. This person-centered approach identifies latent profiles based on observed item response patterns (Muthe´n and Muthe´n 2000). The result is a set of latent profiles where membership within a profile is more homogenous than between profiles. However, individual membership in a specific profile is not definite but is stated in terms of a probability estimate. In other words, LPA indicates how likely it is that each individual belongs to each profile. The models were estimated in MPlus 7.1 (Muthe´n and Muthe´n 1998–2013) using the maximum likelihood estimator with robust standard errors (MLR) (Muthe´n 2004). This estimator, based on Full Information Maximum Likelihood (FIML), addresses missing data by using all available data to maximize the information available for data analysis (Gold et al. 2003). MPlus can also account for multilevel data, allowing us to control for the nesting of individuals in classrooms. In the current study, classroom was included as a cluster variable in the models, in essence controlling for grade level as well as classroom-level nesting. One methodological debate regarding latent profile analysis is whether the determined number of profiles is accurate or is biased by the properties of the measure under analysis. To lessen the likelihood of misspecification, the number of profiles was determined using theoretical justification in combination with fit indices (Nylund et al. 2007). The fit indices used in this study included the Akaike information criterion (AIC), the Bayesian information criteria value (BIC), the adjusted BIC (aBIC), the Lo, Mendell, and Rubin likelihood ratio test (LMR-LRT), and the bootstrapped likelihood ratio test (BLRT). The model with the lowest BIC and aBIC values and a significant LMR-LRT and BLRT p value compared with a model with one fewer class is considered the best fitting model. In addition, the best fitting model should successfully converge, have an entropy value close to 1, and posterior probabilities close to 1 (Nylund et al. 2007). After determining the number of classes based on the best fitting model, we tested whether males and females should be analyzed separately by conducting a series of multiple group tests in MPlus. Specifically, we tested whether item means, profile probabilities, or item variances should be unconstrained, or allowed to differ between males and females. None of the constrained models demonstrated detrimental fit compared with the unconstrained models, indicating that males and females had the same underlying profile structure. However, it could still be

possible that membership likelihood in the different profiles varied by gender. We therefore included gender as a covariate, in order to test whether gender predicted membership in the different profiles.

Results Peer reported data was available for all participants (N = 1170), but self-reported data on machiavellianism, empathic concern, and perspective taking was available for 880 participants (the remaining participants were not authorized by their parents or did not wanted to participate, or were absent during data collection). Thus, we ran independent samples t-tests to examine whether there were significant differences on the peer-nominated study variables between the full sample of 1170 participants and the 880 participants with self-reported data on Machiavellianism and both empathy components. Analyses showed that adolescents with both peer-nominated and self-report data received more liked most nominations [t(1168) = 2.65, p \ 0.01], were perceived as less aggressive [t(1168) = -2.14, p = 0.033], and more prosocial [t(1168) = 4.87, p \ 0.001] compared to students with peer nominated but no self-report data. Considering that self-reported data (machiavellianism and empathy) was available for only 880 participants (73.9 %) but peer-reported data was available for the whole sample (N = 1170), the latent profile analysis was performed separately for the whole sample and for the subsample with complete data. The same patterns in profiles emerged in the subsample, and thus, findings from analyses with the whole sample are presented. Prior to conducting the latent profile analyses, correlations between study variables were calculated. As shown in Table 1, aggression was positively related to peer nominations of popularity and being cool, and negatively related to peer nominations of being liked and prosocial. In turn, prosocial behavior was positively associated with the three social status indicators. Correlations among the social status dimensions were all significant and positive. Regarding the social competence or adjustment indicators, the intercorrelations between machiavellianism, perspective taking and empathic concern were all positive and significant. The three indicators were negatively associated with aggressive behavior and positively related to prosocial behavior. Finally, both components of empathy were positively related to being liked, but no correlations were found between empathy and popularity/coolness. Similarly, there were no significant correlations between machiavellianism and popularity/coolness. Correlations between peer reported variables showed the same results when considering the whole sample (n = 1170), suggesting that

123

J Youth Adolescence

although participants with no self-report data were different on some study variables, the pattern of associations remained unchanged. Latent Profile Analysis Fit indices for the LPA models with the whole sample (n = 1170) are presented in Table 2. Based on the overall assessment of the fit indices and the substantive interpretation of the resulting profiles, the three-class model was determined to be the best fit for the data. In particular, the entropy was high for this model (.89) and, according to the posterior probabilities, this model correctly classified 88–99 % of individuals into the three latent classes. Figure 1 indicates clear distinctions between the three latent classes. Because all variables were converted to z-standardized scores, the data for each profile can be interpreted as the degree to which the average profile mean for each measure was below or above the study sample mean (0). Early adolescents in Profile 1 were considered ‘normative-non aggressive’ (n = 871), representing 75 % of the sample. That is, 75 % of the participating early adolescents were most likely to be classified into this ‘normative-non aggressive’ profile, where participants were significantly below the sample mean on aggression, popularity, and being cool (-.57, -.20, and -.17, respectively). Although prosocial behavior was also below the mean (-.21), this z-score was non-significant. Machiavellianism, empathic concern, and perspective taking were all very close to the mean and thus also non-significant (04, -.01, and .02, respectively). In contrast, Profile 2, or those participants who were most likely to be classified as ‘high prosocial-low aggressive’ (n = 117), represented approximately 10 % of the sample. Participants in this profile could be classified as extremely high on prosocial behavior (2.89) and significantly low on aggression (-.90). Early adolescents in this profile were also significantly above the sample mean on being most liked (.51) and also on self-reported empathic concern (.35) and perspective taking (.27). Finally, Profile 3, or Table 2 Fit indices for latent profile analysis (LPA) models with 1–5 classes (n = 1170)

LL

participants who could be classified as ‘high aggressivehigh popular status’ (n = 176), represented about 15 % of the sample. Participants in this profile were more likely to be extremely aggressive (3.41) and both popular (.71) and cool (.67). They scored significantly below the mean on all other indicators of adjustment, including prosocial behavior (-.99), being liked most (-.31), machiavellianism (-.26), empathic concern (-.41), and perspective taking (-.44). Finally, we examined whether the distribution of profile membership varied by gender, using Profile 1 (the normative-non aggressive profile) as the reference group. Females were over six times more likely (OR 6.22, p \ .001) to be in Profile 2 (the profile extremely high on prosocial behavior and low on aggression) than in Profile 1, compared with males. On the other hand, males were over four times as likely (OR 4.35, p \ .001) to be in Profile 3 (the profile high on aggression and popular status) than in Profile 1, compared with females.

Discussion While research has largely alluded to aggressive and prosocial behaviors being mutually exclusive, some studies assert that both behaviors may co-exist as functional means to effectively controlling interpersonal relationships for purposes of personal gain. Based on social dominance and resource control perspectives, there is empirical evidence showing that aggression can be socially adaptive and indicative of reasonably positive adjustment in the presence of prosocial behaviors (Wargo et al. 2011). It remains unclear, however, whether the seemingly adaptive nature of aggression stems from its co-occurrence with prosocial behaviors or whether it may be confounded by its associations with socially constructed positions of social status (see Berger 2011; Rodkin et al. 2006). Thus, the current study used latent profile analysis in a Chilean sample of early adolescents, to test if both aggressive and prosocial behaviors may co-exist as part of varying social status

One class

Two class

Three class

Four class

Five class

-11,065.33

-9913.77

-9753.61

-9663.77

-9583.33

AIC

22,222.66

19,935.53

19,635.21

19,475.53

19,334.65

BIC

22,455.52

20,208.75

19,959.03

19,849.94

19,759.66

aBIC

22,309.41

19,492.85

20,037.23

19,755.74

19,614.89

Entropy

–

0.93

0.89

0.85

0.84

LMR (p value)

–

0.19

0.59

0.55

0.70

aLMR (p value)

–

0.19

0.59

0.55

0.70

LL log likelihood; AIC Akaike information criterion; BIC Bayesian information criteria value; aBIC adjusted BIC; LMR Lo, Mendell, and Rubin likelihood ratio test; aLMR adjusted LMR-LRT

123

J Youth Adolescence Aggressive

4 3.5

***

Z-Standardized Scores

3

Prosocial

***

Popular

2.5

Liked Most 2

Cool

1.5

Machiavellian

1

*** **

0.5 0

***

***

**

Class 1 -0.5 -1

Normative-Non Aggressive (75%)

* **

***

Class 2

***

***

**

Empathic Concern * *** ***

Class 3

High Prosocial-Low Aggressive (10%)

Perspective Taking

High AggressiveHigh Popular Status (15%)

-1.5

Fig. 1 Three-class solution for latent profiles of early adolescents’ behavioral, social status, and socio-emotional adjustment (N = 1170). Note *p \ .05; **p \ .01; ***p \ .001

configurations, including perceived popularity, coolness, and likeability. It was hypothesized that specific profiles would show different levels of social competence or adjustment indicators, assessed through self-reports of machiavellianism and two components of empathy (perspective taking and empathic concern). Three profiles emerged, clearly distinguishable by being average on aggression and prosocial behaviors, highly aggressive or highly prosocial. The prosocial profile was characterized by above average scores on all social status measures, and higher scores on both cognitive and affective empathy. By contrast, the aggressive profile showed the highest scores on popularity and coolness but the lowest on likeability, and also the lowest scores on machiavellianism and both empathy components. Clearly, there was no profile where aggressive and prosocial behaviors were found to co-exist or both be significantly above average. Overall, the aggressive groups did not appear to fare well, particularly on emotional measures of empathic concern. Building on Hawley’s work (2003, 2007), we were primarily interested in the so-called bistrategic controllers, who are assumed to be machiavellian due to their strategic uses of aggressive and prosocial behaviors for purposes of achieving and maintaining power over their peers. However, in the current sample there were no bistrategic controllers; rather, there was a normative profile characterized by displaying average (i.e., low) levels of prosocial and aggressive behaviors and also average scores on all three

status indicators. The other two profiles were characterized by an opposite pattern of aggressive and prosocial behaviors (high aggressive-low prosocial, and high prosocial-low aggressive), with varying correlates of social status. As expected, the aggressive/non-prosocial profile displayed higher scores on popularity and coolness but the lowest on likeability, whereas the prosocial/non-aggressive group showed higher scores on likeability. It is worth noting, however, that both groups had higher scores in popularity and coolness compared to the average group. In other words, both aggressive and prosocial behaviors constitute significant correlates of social status. The consideration of several distinct measures of social status may explain the absence of a bistrategic controller profile, since studies from a goal framing perspective have found that adolescent dominance and status goals are related to aggression (Ojanen et al. 2005), whereas intimacy and relationship goals have been related to prosocial behaviors (Kiefer and Ryan 2008). The present findings support these associations. These specific profiles point to the complex association between behaviors and social status, and should be taken into consideration when planning prevention and intervention efforts to reduce aggression or school bullying and to promote positive relationships. For instance, researchers and practitioners alike need to investigate when and why coolness might involve admiration from others as opposed to other attributes linked to low levels of popularity and preference.

123

J Youth Adolescence

Along with identifying early adolescents’ behavioral and social status profiles, we were interested in how these profiles were associated with self-perceptions of actual machiavellianism and empathy. Machiavellianism has been proposed to be central to bistrategic controllers, since it alludes to the strategic use of interpersonal relationships in order to achieve one’s goals. From a peer relations perspective, however, machiavellianism might be considered counter-productive to building intimate and supportive relationships, and the consideration of an affective dimension of social status (social preference) may explain why no bistrategic controllers were found in this sample. However, contrary to our expectations, the profile characterized by higher levels of aggression and lower levels of prosocial behavior displayed lower levels of machiavellianism. Since machiavellianism refers to strategic uses of prosocial and aggressive behaviors, the expectation that aggressive adolescents are machiavellian would depend on the social patterns of their specific peer environment. In other words, machiavellian adolescents would behave aggressively only if aggression allows them to achieve their social goals. It is worth noting that machiavellianism constitutes a dispositions towards others, but does not necessarily imply having the skills to strategically and effectively use aggression and prosocial behaviors (Berger and Palacios 2014). In other words, being machiavellian seems to be related to being perceived as aggressive, possibly lacking social skills to effectively establish interpersonal relationships. Regarding empathy, we differentiated cognitive and affective dimensions of empathy in light of previous studies showing that the latter (i.e., empathic concern) is consistently inhibitive of aggression while the former (i.e., perspective taking) is not and especially for popular youth (Batanova and Loukas 2011; Caravita et al. 2009). Thus, we had expected that aggressive behavior could co-occur with perspective taking, but not empathic concern. Current study findings partially supported these expectations, whereby both empathy components were higher in the normative (or average) profile as well as the high prosociallow aggressive profile, as compared to the profile high on aggression, popularity, and coolness (which was low on all positive indicators). The inclusion of being liked as well as prosocial may explain why perspective taking was not part of an aggressive profile, highlighting the need to take into account a broader picture of youth status and behavior when examining the role of empathy in aggression. The inclusion of empathic concern is particularly novel for the peer relations literature (for exceptions, see Caravita et al. 2009, 2010). Studies on aggression and social status have usually focused on social skills (e.g., perspective taking) and peer valued characteristics (e.g., athleticism) as they may serve to elevate one’s position, without much consideration for the affective elements of social

123

competition (Peeters et al. 2010). The present study shows that aggressive youth, although popular and perceived as cool by their peers, do not necessarily display a healthy capacity for feeling empathically towards others. The overarching focus on social prominence as an adolescent social goal needs to acknowledge and seriously emphasize its drawbacks, particularly when considering the value of emotions (Allen et al. 2005; Mayeux et al. 2008). The empirical investigation of machiavellianism also constitutes an important contribution, given its limited and mixed findings to date. Machiavellianism constitutes a nice way to understand the interplay between individual and social processes, by focusing on individual beliefs and attitudes towards others that may underlie behaviors, such as aggression or being prosocial. Understanding the processes that lead to machiavellianism could be particularly informative for prevention/intervention programs seeking to promote positive relationships and curb bullying and aggression. The current study findings also highlight the adaptive nature of aggression in relation to social status structures, particularly by showing its associations to social status. While these associations have been consistently reported in the literature, fewer studies have simultaneously included the examination of both aggressive and prosocial behaviors (Berger and Rodkin 2012; Ellis and Zarbatany 2007; Chung-Hall and Chen 2010). Future studies should further explore the complex association between aggression, prosocial behavior, and social status, focusing on the social function of these behaviors by adopting a peer relations perspective and longitudinal research designs. More research is needed to better understand and characterize bistrategic controllers, as they were presented by Hawley (2003). Although gender was not a central focus in this study, we tested for gender differences. Results showed that the same profiles emerged among boys and girls. However, females were much more likely to be in the prosocial profile, whereas males were more likely to be aggressive. These differences may reflect the pervasive gender stereotypes of the Chilean culture and particularly the socialization of boys as having to meet an expected masculinity characterized by power and competition. Future studies should further explore how behavioral and socioemotional adjustment indicators may differ within gender specific contexts or cultural contexts with stronger gender equity. The present study has some limitations that should be considered when interpreting the results. First, we used the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis 1980, 1983) to assess perspective taking and empathic concern, and despite these subscales’ validated psychometric properties, in the current sample they had relatively low internal

J Youth Adolescence

consistencies. This is surprising, given that Fernandez et al. (2011) used confirmatory factor analysis to assess the psychometric properties of the IRI in a Chilean college student population and corroborated its theoretical structure, reporting an internal consistency of .73 for the perspective taking and empathic concern subscales. Although no study to our knowledge has systematically validated the IRI with Chilean adolescents, we decided to run confirmatory analyses and keep a conservative approach by selecting the items that showed higher loadings and allowed a better internal consistency for the subscales used. Thus, we were able to keep its theoretical structure due to its overwhelming validity. Future studies should focus solely on validating the IRI’s theoretical structure among Chilean adolescents populations. Another methodological limitation of the current study is the examination of peer reported aggression as a unified construct, without consideration for its different forms (i.e., physical vs. relational) and functions (i.e., reactive vs. proactive). While both forms of aggression have been linked to adjustment problems (e..g, Herrenkohl et al. 2009) and studies show that both physically and relationally aggressive youth are generally disliked by their peers but may also be perceived (either by themselves or their peers) to be popular and powerful (e.g., Juvonen et al. 2013; Mayeux and Cillessen 2008), the literature has also pointed to clear distinctions in both forms of aggression as they relate to popularity in particular as well as social competence. Unlike physical aggression, for instance, relationally aggressive youth have been found to report positive adjustment, including leadership and cooperation (Puckett et al. 2008), and also to exhibit popularity and social intelligence (Peeters et al. 2010). These distinctions are also relevant when considering gender, since boys typically have higher levels of physical aggression than girls at any age (Nagin and Tremblay 2001; Prinstein et al. 2001), whereas the evidence on gender differences in early adolescent relational aggression is mixed (Batanova and Loukas 2011; Peets and Kikas 2006). It should be noted, in light of this literature, that preliminary analyses did involve separating the four peer nominated items by physical (‘‘S/he starts fights’’ and ‘‘Gets in problems’’) and relational (‘‘Makes fun about others’’ and ‘‘Ignores others’’) forms of aggression, which did not add significantly to the results. On the contrary, running the latent profile analysis with two separate variables of physical and relational aggression weakened the fit of the model (perhaps due to a combination of low variance in these variables as well as collinearity between the two constructs). Furthermore, separating the two aggression models did not clearly change the pattern of profiles from the results reported above. Future studies should further explore

how different types of aggression may have different implications for social adaptation, considering for instance that the use of relational aggression reflects socio-emotional skills and social goals (Golmaryami and Barry 2009) and thus, it is important to measure each form with a representative set of items. With regard to the functions of aggression, it is possible that reactive aggressors, in comparison to proactive aggressors, are more prosocial but not nearly as functional or socially adaptive. Another limitation that deserves attention when interpreting the results is the specificity of the sample and more broadly the peer culture among Chilean educational contexts. Students in Chilean schools remain together with their classmates over primary education (grades 1st–8th). Thus, school contexts are stable environments in which peer relations unfold. This is very different to other settings where most research has been conducted. In the United States, for instance, there is a marked transition from elementary to middle school, when students face a myriad of challenges that come with attending different classes with different teachers (Eccles and Roeser 2011). Though a limitation, this cultural consideration should not weaken the study results, for they give evidence that helps to broaden our understanding of peer relations and adolescent development among different countries and cultures. For instance, studies have shown that aggression is related negatively to preference and positively to popularity across several countries, such as the United States (Rose and Swenson 2009; Rodkin et al. 2000; Waasdorp et al. 2013), Finland (Ojanen et al. 2005), and China (Chang 2004). Above these findings, specific associations by type of aggression have also been reported in the Netherlands (Peters et al. 2010; Zwaan et al. 2013), Finland (Salmivalli et al. 2000), and Russia (Butovskaya et al. 2007), among others. Qualitative research also supports these associations, for instance in Australia (Pronk and Zimmer-Gembeck 2010), Chile (Potocnjak et al. 2011), and the United Kingdom (Pountain and Robins 2000). Despite the limitations, the present study has several strengths that contribute to the literature on peer relations. First, by using a person-centered approach with self and peer reported data, the present study focuses on the interplay between individual profiles and interpersonal relationships. It also features a large sample from an understudied international population, Chilean early adolescents, thus broadening our knowledge of how various populations of young adolescents develop within their peer culture. Most importantly, the current study rejects fixed notions of behavior, social status, and adjustment, assuming that all such indicators lie on a continuum that can be examined concurrently and simultaneously to reflect important associations (or lack thereof) during early adolescence.

123

J Youth Adolescence

Conclusions The present study demonstrated that aggressive and prosocial behaviors may not co-exist in all populations, nor does aggression have an adaptive value over prosocial behavior. Although both aggression and prosocial behaviors have significant associations with social status indicators, they show different configurations within adolescent social structures, attaching their adaptive value to different dimensions of status, namely, aggression to popularity and coolness, and prosocial behavior to being liked. Moreover, the current study underscores the heterogeneity of aggression, while emphasizing the emotional value of prosocial behaviors by means of its positive associations with both cognitive and affective empathy. The finding that machiavellianism was not present in the extremely prosocial group but was significantly low in the extremely aggressive group also underscores the heterogeneity of this construct, calling for future research to examine how adolescents understand and experience interpersonal relationships as contexts for development and wellbeing, or as functional means for achieving personal goals. Finally, even though girls were more likely to be in the prosocial profile whereas boys were more likely to be in the aggressive profile, the same profile structure was observed across genders. Overall, the study findings can be used to guide prevention and intervention strategies for promoting prosocial behaviors (by enhancing students’ likeability and empathy) and reducing the adaptive value placed on aggression (by countering messages around popularity and coolness). Acknowledgments This study was supported by the Interdisciplinary Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Studies-ICIIS, GRANT: CONICYT/FONDAP/15110006 and by Programa de Investigacio´n Asociativa-Comisio´n Nacional para la Investigacio´n Cientı´fica y Tecnolo´gica (PIA-CONICYT), Project Anillos in Social Sciences and Humanities ‘‘Normalidad, Diferencia y Educacio´n’’ (SOC1103). Conflict of interest

The authors report no conflict of interests.

Author contributions CB conceived of the study, participated in its design and coordination, performed the measurement and drafted the manuscript; MB conceived of the study, participated in its design and coordination, performed the statistical analysis and drafted the manuscript; JDC performed the statistical analysis and drafted the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

References Allen, J. P., Porter, M. R., McFarland, F. C., Marsh, P., & McElhaney, K. B. (2005). The two faces of adolescents’ success with peers: Adolescent popularity, social adaptation, and deviant behavior. Child Development, 76, 747–760. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624. 2005.00875.x

123

Allsopp, J., Eysenck, H. J., & Eysenck, S. B. G. (1991). Machiavellianism as a component in psychoticism and extraversion. Personality and Individual Differences, 12, 29–41. doi:10. 1016/0191-8869(91)90129-Y. Andreou, E. (2004). Bully/victim problems and their association with Machiavellianism and self-efficacy in Greek primary school children. The British Journal of Educational Psychology, 74(2), 297–309. doi:10.1348/000709904773839897 Arsenio, W. F., & Lemerise, E. A. (2004). Aggression and moral development: Integrating social information processing and moral domain models. Child Development, 75, 987–1002. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2004.00720.x Batanova, M. D., & Loukas, A. (2011). Social anxiety and aggression in early adolescents: Examining the moderating roles of empathic concern and perspective taking. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 40(11), 1534–1543. doi:10.1007/s10964-011-9634-x Bereczkei, T., Birkas, B., & Kerekes, Z. (2010). The presence of others, prosocial traits, Machiavellianism: A personality x situation approach. Social Psychology, 41(4), 238–245. doi:10. 1027/1864-9335/a000032 Berger, C. (2011). Agresividad, prosocialidad y estatus social: Identificando perfiles admirados entre preadolescentes chilenos. Magis, Revista Internacional de Investigacion en Educacion, 4, 357–368. Berger, C., & Palacios, D. (2014). Associations between prosocial behavior, machiavellianism, and social status: Effects of peer norms and classroom social contexts. Journal of Latino/Latinamerican Studies, 6(1), 19–30. Berger, C., & Rodkin, P. (2012). Group influences on individual aggression and prosociality: Early adolescents who change peer affiliations. Social Development, 21(2), 396–413. doi:10.1111/j. 1467-9507.2011.00628.x Butovskaya, M. L., Timentschik, V. M., & Burkova, V. N. (2007). Aggression, conflict resolution, popularity, and attitude to school in Russian adolescents. Aggressive Behavior, 33, 170–183. doi:10.1002/ab.20197 Caravita, S., Di Blasio, P., & Salmivalli, C. (2009). Unique and interactive effects of empathy and social status on involvement in bullying. Social Development, 18(1), 140–163. doi:10.1111/j. 1467-9507.2008.00465.x Caravita, S. C., Di Blasio, P., & Salmivalli, C. (2010). Early adolescents’ participation in bullying: Is ToM involved? Journal of Early Adolescence, 30(1), 138–170. doi:10.1177/02724316 09342983 Carlo, G., Hausmann, A., Christiansen, S., & Randall, B. A. (2003). Sociocognitive and behavioral correlates of a measure of prosocial tendencies for adolescents. Journal of Early Adolescence, 23(1), 107–134. doi:10.1177/0272431602239132 Chang, L. (2004). The role of classroom norms in contextualizing the relations of children’s social behaviors to peer acceptance. Developmental Psychology, 40(5), 691–702. doi:10.1037/00121649.40.5.691. Chen, B.-B., & Chang, L. (2012). Are ‘‘Machiavellian’’ Chinese children well-adapted in the peer group? The relationship between resource acquisition strategies and social functioning and status. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 15(2), 122–131. doi:10.1111/j.1467-839X.2012.01373.x Christie, R., & Geis, F. L. (1970). Studies in Machiavellianism. New York: Academic Press. Chung-Hall, J., & Chen, X. (2010). Aggressive and prosocial peer group functioning: Effects on children’s social, school, and psychological adjustment. Social Development, 19, 659–680. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9507.2009.00556.x Cillessen, A. H., & Borch, C. (2006). Developmental trajectories of adolescent popularity: A growth curve modelling analysis. Journal of Adolescence, 29(6), 935–959.

J Youth Adolescence Cillessen, A., & Mayeux, L. (2004). From censure to reinforcement: Developmental changes in the association between aggression and social status. Child Development, 75, 147–163. Cohen, D., & Strayer, J. (1996). Empathy in conduct-disordered and comparison youth. Developmental Psychology, 32(6), 988–998. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.32.6.988 Crick, N. R., & Dodge, K. A. (1994). A review and reformulation of social information-processing mechanisms in children’s social adjustment. Psychological Bulletin, 115(1), 74–101. doi:10. 1037/0033-2909.115.1.74 Czibor, A., & Bereczkei, T. (2012). Machiavellian people’s success results from monitoring their partners. Personality and Individual Differences, 53(3), 202–206. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2012.03. 005 Davis, M. H. (1980). A multidimensional approach to individual differences in empathy. JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 1980(10), 85. Davis, M. H. (1983). Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 113–126. Davis, M. H. (1994). Empathy: A social psychological approach. Boulder: Westview Press. De Kemp, R. A., Overbeek, G., de Wied, M., Engels, R. C., & Scholte, R. H. (2007). Early adolescent empathy, parental support, and antisocial behavior. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 168(1), 5–18. doi:10.3200/GNTP.168.1.5-18 Eccles, J. S., & Roeser, R. W. (2011). Schools as developmental contexts during adolescence. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 21(1), 225–241. Eisenberg, N., Eggum, N. D., & Di Giunta, L. (2010). Empathyrelated responding: Associations with prosocial behavior, aggression, and intergroup relations. Social Issues and Policy Review, 4(1), 143–180. doi:10.1111/j.1751-2409.2010.01020.x Eisenberg, N., Zhou, Q., & Koller, S. (2001). Brazilian adolescents’ prosocial moral judgment and behavior: Relations to sympathy, perspective taking, gender-role orientation, and demographic characteristics. Child Development, 72(2), 518–534. doi:10. 1111/1467-8624.00294 Ellis, W., & Zarbatany, L. (2007). Peer group status as a moderator of group influence on children’s deviant, aggressive, and prosocial behavior. Child Development, 78, 1240–1254. Erath, S. A., Pettit, G. S., Dodge, K. A., & Bates, J. E. (2009). Who dislikes whom, and for whom does it matter: Predicting aggression in middle childhood. Social Development, 18, 577–596. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9507.2008.00497.x Fernandez, A. M., Dufey, M., & Kramp, U. (2011). Testing the psychometric properties of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) in Chile: Empathy in a different cultural context. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 27(3), 179–185. doi:10. 1027/1015-5759/a000065 Garandeau, C. F., & Cillessen, A. H. (2006). From indirect aggression to invisible aggression: A conceptual view on bullying and peer group manipulation. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 11(6), 612–625. doi:10.1016/j.avb.2005.08.005. Gini, G. (2006). Social cognition and moral cognition in bullying: What’s wrong? Aggressive Behavior, 32(6), 528–539. doi:10. 1002/ab.20153 Gini, G., Pozzoli, T., & Hauser, M. (2011). Bullies have enhanced moral competence to judge relative to victims, but lack moral compassion. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(5), 603–608. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.12.002 Gold, M. S., Bentler, P. M., & Kim, K. H. A. (2003). Comparison of maximum-likelihood and asymptotically distribution-free methods of treating incomplete nonnormal data. Structural Equation Modeling, 10(1), 47–79.

Golmaryami, F. N., & Barry, C. T. (2009). The associations of selfreported and peer-reported relational aggression with narcissism and self-esteem among adolescents in a residential setting. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 39, 128–133. doi:10.1080/15374410903401203 Hawley, P. H. (1999). The ontogenesis of social dominance: A strategy-based evolutionary perspective. Developmental Review, 19, 97–132. Hawley, P. H. (2003). Prosocial and coercive configurations of resource control in early adolescence: A case for the welladapted Machiavellian. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 49, 279–309. Hawley, P. H. (2006). Evolution and personality: A new look at Machiavellianism. Handbook of personality development (pp. 147–161). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Hawley, P. H. (2007). Social dominance in childhood and adolescence: Why social competence and aggression may go hand in hand. In P. H. Hawley, T. D. Little, & P. Rodkin (Eds.), Aggression and adaptation: The bright side to bad behavior. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates. Hawley, P. H., Little, T. D., & Pasupathi, M. (2002). Winning friends and influencing peers: Strategies of peer influence in late childhood. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 26(5), 466–474. doi:10.1080/01650250143000427 Herrenkohl, T. I., Catalano, R. F., Hemphill, S. A., & Toumbourou, J. W. (2009). Longitudinal examination of physical and relational aggression as precursors to later problem behaviors in adolescents. Violence and Victimization, 24, 3–19. Jolliffe, D., & Farrington, D. P. (2006). Examining the relationship between low empathy and bullying. Aggressive Behavior, 32(6), 540–550. doi:10.1002/ab.20154 Jolliffe, D., & Farrington, D. P. (2011). Is low empathy related to bullying after controlling for individual and social background variables? Journal of Adolescence, 34(1), 59–71. doi:10.1016/j. adolescence.2010.02.001 Juvonen, J., & Galvan, A. (2008). Peer influence in involuntary social groups: Lessons from research on bullying. In M. Prinstein & K. Dodge (Eds.), Understanding peer influence in children and adolescents. Duke series in child development and public policy (pp. 225–244). New York: Guilford Press. Juvonen, J., Wang, Y., & Espinoza, G. (2013). Physical aggression, spreading of rumors, and social prominence in early adolescence: Reciprocal effects supporting gender similarities? Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 42, 1801–1810. doi:10.1007/s10964012-9894-0 Kiefer, S., & Ryan, A. (2008). Striving for social dominance over peers: The implications for academic adjustment during early adolescence. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100(2), 417–428. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.100.2.417 Li, Y., & Wright, F. (2014). Adolescents’ social status goals: Relationships to social status insecurity, aggression, and prosocial behavior. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 43(1), 146–160. doi:10.1007/s10964-013-9939-z Mayeux, L., & Cillessen, A. H. (2008). It’s not just being popular, it’s knowing it, too: The role of self-perceptions of status in the associations between peer status and aggression. Social Development, 17(4), 871–888. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9507.2008.00474.x Mayeux, L., Sandstrom, M. J., & Cillessen, A. H. (2008). Is being popular a risky proposition? Journal of Research on Adolescence, 18, 49–74. Mchoskey, J. W. (1999). Machiavellianism, intrinsic versus extrinsic goals, and social interest: A self-determination theory analysis. Motivation and Emotion, 23(4), 267–283. Miller, P. A., & Eisenberg, N. (1988). The relation of empathy to aggressive and externalizing antisocial behavior. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 324–344.

123

J Youth Adolescence Ministerio de Planificacio´n, Chile. (2005). Estadı´sticas sociales de los pueblos indı´genas en Chile. Censo 2002. Santiago: Programa Orı´genes MIDEPLAN-BID. Molano, A., Jones, S. M., Brown, J. L., & Aber, J. L. (2013). Selection and socialization of aggressive and prosocial behavior: The moderating role of social-cognitive processes. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 23, 424–436. doi:10.1111/jora.12034. Muthe´n, B. O. (2004). Latent variable analysis: Growth mixture modeling and related techniques for longitudinal data. In D. Kaplan (Ed.), Handbook of quantitative methodology for the social sciences (pp. 345–368). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Muthe´n, B. O., & Muthe´n, L. K. (1998–2013). MPlus user’s guide. Los Angeles: Authors. Muthe´n, B. O., & Muthe´n, L. K. (2000). Integrating person-centered and variable-centered analyses: Growth mixture modeling with latent trajectory classes. Alcoholism, Clinical and Experimental Research, 24, 882–891. Nagin, D. S., & Tremblay, R. E. (2001). Parental and early childhood predictors of persistent physical aggression in boys from kindergarten to high school. Archives of General Psychiatry, 58, 389–394. Nylund, K. L., Asparouhov, T., & Muthe´n, B. O. (2007). Deciding on the number of classes in latent class analysis and growth mixture modeling: A Monte Carlo simulation study. Structural Equation Modeling, 14(4), 535–569. doi:10.1080/10705510 701575396 Ojanen, T., Gro¨nroos, M., & Salmivalli, C. (2005). An interpersonal circumplex model of children’s social goals: Links with peerreported behavior and sociometric status. Developmental Psychology, 41, 699–710. Peeters, M., Cillessen, A. H. N., & Scholte, R. (2010). Clueless or powerful? Identifying subtypes of bullies in adolescence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 39(9), 1041–1052. doi:10. 1007/s10964-009-9478-9 Peets, K., & Kikas, E. (2006). Aggressive strategies and victimization during adolescence: Grade and gender differences, and crossinformant agreement. Aggressive Behavior, 32, 68–79. Pellegrini, A. D., Roseth, C. J., Van Ryzin, M. V., & Solberg, D. (2011). The place of social dominance and aggression in children’s and adolescents’ popularity. In A. Cillessen, D. Schwartz, & L. Mayeux (Eds.), Popularity in the peer system. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Peters, E., Cillessen, A. H. N., Riksen-Walraven, J., & Haselager, H. (2010). Best friends’ preference and popularity: Associations with aggression and prosocial behavior. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 34, 398–405. Phillips, C. (2003). Who’s who in the pecking order? Aggression and ‘normal violence’ in the lives of girls and boys. British Journal of Criminology, 43(4), 710–728. doi:10.1093/bjc/43.4.710 Potocnjak, M., Berger, C., & Tomicic, T. (2011). Una aproximacio´n relacional a la violencia escolar entre pares en adolescentes chilenos: Perspectiva adolescente de factores intervinientes. Psykhe, 20(2), 39–52. doi:10.4067/S0718-22282011000200004 Pountain, D., & Robins, D. (2000). Cool rules: Anatomy of an attitude. London: Reaktion Books. Prinstein, M. J., Boergers, J., & Vernberg, E. M. (2001). Overt and relational aggression in adolescents: Social–psychological functioning of aggressors and victims. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 30, 477–489. Pronk, R., & Zimmer-Gembeck, M. (2010). It’s ‘‘mean’’, but what does it mean to adolescents? Relational aggression by victims, aggressors, and their peers. Journal of Adolescent Research, 25, 175–204. doi:10.1177/0743558409350504 Puckett, M. B., Aikins, J. W., & Cillessen, A. H. N. (2008). Moderators of the associations between relational aggression and perceived popularity. Aggressive Behavior, 34, 563–576.

123

Rodkin, P. C., Farmer, T. W., Pearl, R., & Van Acker, R. (2000). Heterogeneity of popular boys: Antisocial and prosocial configurations. Developmental Psychology, 36(1), 14–24. Rodkin, P. C., Farmer, T. W., Pearl, R., & Van Acker, R. (2006). They’re cool: Social status and peer group supports for aggressive boys and girls. Social Development, 15(2), 175–204. doi:10.1046/j.1467-9507.2006.00336.x Rodkin, P. C., Ryan, A., Jamison, R., & Wilson, T. (2013). Social goals, social behavior, and social status in middle childhood. Developmental Psychology, 49(6), 1139–1150. doi:10.1037/ a0029389 Rose, A., & Swenson, L. (2009). Do perceived popular adolescents who aggress against others experience emotional adjustment problems themselves? Developmental Psychology, 45(3), 868–872. doi:10.1037/a0015408 Rubin, K. H., Chen, X., & Hymel, S. (1993). Socioemotional characteristics of withdrawn and aggressive children. MerrillPalmer Quarterly (1982-), 518–534. Salmivalli, C., Kaukiainen, A., & Lagerspetz, K. (2000). Aggression and sociometric status among peers: Do gender and type of aggression matter? Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 41, 17–24. doi:10.1111/1467-9450.00166. Sijtsema, J., Veenstra, R., Lindenberg, S., & Salmivalli, C. (2009). Empirical test of bullies’ status goall: Assessing direct goals, aggression, and prestige. Aggressive Behavior, 35, 57–67. doi:10.1002/ab.20282 Sutton, J., & Keogh, E. (2001). Components of Machiavellian beliefs in children: Relationships with personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 30(1), 137–148. doi:10.1016/S01918869(00)00017-9 Sutton, J., Smith, P. K., & Swettenham, J. (1999). Social cognition and bullying: Social inadequacy or skilled manipulation? British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 17(3), 435–450. doi:10. 1348/026151099165384 Vaillancourt, T., McDougall, P., Hymel, S., & Sunderani, S. (2010). Respect or fear? The relationship between power and bullying behavior. In S. Jimerson, S. Swearer, & D. Espelage (Eds.), Handbook of bullying in schools: An international perspective (pp. 211–222). London: Routledge. Veenstra, R. (2006). The development of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Prosocial and antisocial behavior in adolescence. Solidarity and Prosocial Behavior,. doi:10.1007/0-387-28032-4_6 Veenstra, R., Lindenberg, S., Munniksma, A., & Dijkstra, J. K. (2010). The complex relation between bullying, victimization, acceptance, and rejection: Giving special attention to status, affection, and sex differences. Child Development, 81, 480–486. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01411.x Waasdorp, T., Baker, C., Paskewich, B., & Leff, S. (2013). Aggression, leadership, and social status among urban youth. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 43(2), 263–274. doi:10.1007/ s10964-012-9837-9 Warden, D., & Mackinnon, S. (2003). Prosocial children, bullies and victims: An investigation of their sociometric status, empathy and social problem-solving strategies. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 21(3), 367–385. Wargo Aikins, J., & Litwack, S. (2011). Prosocial skills, social competence and popularity. In A. H. N. Cillessen, D. Schwartz, & L. Mayeux (Eds.), Popularity in the peer system (pp. 140–162). New York: Guilford Press. Wentzel, K., & Asher, S. (1995). The academic lives of neglected, rejected, popular, and controversial children. Child Development, 66, 754–763. Werner, N. E., & Crick, N. R. (2004). Maladaptive peer relationships and the development of relational and physical aggression during middle childhood. Social Development, 13(4), 495–514. doi:10. 1111/j.1467-9507.2004.00280.x

J Youth Adolescence Zwaan, M., Dijkstra, J. K., & Veenstra, R. (2013). Three contextual factors explaining the status-aggression link among adolescents. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 37(3), 211–221. doi:10.1177/0165025412471018

Christian Berger, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. His research interests are peer relations among adolescents, and in particular how social status, aggressive and prosocial behaviors are part of the adolescent peer culture. Milena Batanova, Ph.D. is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development at Tufts University. Her passion lies in understanding the meanings, antecedents, and

outcomes of empathy among youth, with a focus on how different components of empathy and other individual/contextual factors are related to various types of aggression and bullying involvement (including defending behaviors). Milena is interested in applying this research to the development and implementation of social, emotional, and character development programming (in and out of school). Jessica Duncan Cance, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on how the longitudinal interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors impacts adolescent and young adult health risk behaviors such as substance use and aggression.

123