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Frienemies: Coping with Relational Aggression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Would you like to go back to middle school? This simple question evokes fear in the heart of even the most evolved and self-actualized adult. Nearly everyone can recall images of being excluded, embarrassed, and/or “picked-on” during their time in middle school. Theorists have named this subtle, indirect form of hostility relational aggression. Relational aggression describes behaviors that seek to harm others through manipulation, intentional damage, or threats of damage to interpersonal relationships (e.g. exclusion, dirty looks, etc.) (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995). This type of aggression is a strategy for attaining a social advantage by manipulating others’ social status and alliances (Tomada & Schneider, 1997). The frequency of peer victimization increases as peer relationships become increasingly significant during adolescence (Bernt, 1982). Just as physical and verbal bullying in childhood can have detrimental effects on the self-perceptions of children (Wilton, Craig, & Pepler, 2000), relationally aggressive acts can damage the social development of an adolescent. The social-psychological distress and anxiety resulting from this victimization can make it difficult to concentrate on schoolwork and to function in everyday life. Most parents, teachers, and school faculty members know all too well that behaviors associated with relational aggression often consume a great deal of time and energy both at class room and school-wide levels. Our laboratory investigated relational aggression in more detail to see if there was anything that cognitive neuroscience could elucidate about this issue. We studied relational aggression using both self-report and survey methods. Individuals were asked about their own behavior and behaviors they observe within their social setting. We implemented a 7-week mentoring program, Frienemies: Building Better Friendships, which was designed to build socio-cognitive skills and to provide problem-solving strategies for dealing with relational aggression. A secondary goal of this study was to better understand the brain mechanisms potentially contributing to an adolescent's ability to cope with relational aggression, and further, how maturational processes might influence this ability. To this end, we also asked girls who participated in the study to visit Dartmouth College to collect information about their brain structure and function using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participants came to Dartmouth College for an MRI scan before the program (October or November, 2004) and once after the program (February or March, 2005). Twenty seventh-grade girls were recruited to participate in the study. We worked with the middle school teachers and administrators to develop a seven-week mentoring program, Frienemies, Building Better Friendships, that would help girls acquire cognitive skills to better cope with relational aggression. The program focused on perspective taking, emotional awareness and conflict resolution. Mentoring took place one hour per week during an “explore” period that the school had allocated for activities. Girls were randomly placed into either the mentoring program, or another activity (e.g. candle making, modern dance etc.), so there were ten girls in each group. All participants came to the lab for baseline behavioral testing, and an fMRI paradigm that required them to cope with peer rejection/relational aggression. All participants also returned to the lab for follow-up measures after the activity period. The results from the intervention were highly significant. Relative to the comparison group receiving no mentoring, those who were mentored in the experimental group showed significantly greater improvements on measures of social anxiety and indices of friendship quality following the mentoring program. Strikingly, there was also a significant increase in DLPFC activity in the experimental group during the follow-up fMRI protocol. This increase in DLPFC activity suggests that the girls who were involved in the mentoring program not only made significant improvement in their behavior, but this was also reflected in the activity of a neural region consistently associated with cognitive strategy and emotion regulation.
Due to the success of this program, we are planning to return to the same school next year and repeat the program with an even larger sample. |
