Social reasoning

Clinical Psychology Review, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 447–469, 2001Copyright © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd.Printed in the USA. All rights reserved

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447

SOCIAL REASONING: A SOURCE OF INFLUENCE ON AGGRESSION

Robin J. Harvey, Janet Fletcher, and Davina J. French

University of Western Australia

ABSTRACT.

Aggressive children show deficits and biases in their social information process-ing. Cognitions based on early experience and social schemas are also related to development andmaintenance of aggressive behavior. Social reasoning can be linked to these aspects of social cog-nition, impacting on the situational cues individuals encode, their interpretations of events, andinfluencing response decisions. Past experience also influences development of social reasoningand social schema. Despite this, current discussion of the links between cognition and aggressionrarely involves consideration of the influence of social reasoning. In this review, domain theory(E. Turiel, 1978, 1983) underpins an examination of links between social reasoning and ag-gression using empirical evidence drawn from research on the social reasoning of normal and ag-gressive children. Children as young as 3 appear to use consistent patterns of social reasoningwhen making judgments about transgressions and other social events, and these patterns arelinked to social reasoning domains. We propose that aggressive children access information fromthe underlying social reasoning domains differently than their prosocial peers. This in turn af-fects their decision making and subsequent behavior in social situations. Our review explores de-velopmental and clinical implications of the proposal and provides directions for futureresearch. © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd.

KEY WORDS.

Childhood aggression, Social reasoning, Domain theory, Cognitivelinks to aggression, Social information processing, Moral development.

HIGH LEVELS OF aggression in young children are of concern to the community be-cause of the stability of such behavior with age, and findings that children displayingsuch behavior are highly likely to display symptoms of conduct disorder and/or delin-quency in adolescence and adulthood (Achenbach, Howell, Quay, & Conners, 1991;Campbell, 1994; Campbell & Ewing, 1990; Campbell, March, Pierce, Ewing, &Szumowski, 1991; Deater-Deckard, Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 1998; Velhurst, Eussen, Ber-

Correspondence should be addressed to Robin J. Harvey, Department of Psychology, Universityof Western Australia, Nedlands, Western Australia, 6907, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]

448 R. J. Harvey et al.

den, Sanders-Woudstra, & van der Ende, 1993). Many research projects have exam-ined the factors that contribute to development and maintenance of such externaliz-ing behaviors (Deater-Deckard et al., 1998; Fergusson, Horwood, & Lynskey, 1995;Stormshak & Bierman, 1998). In general, these investigations have identified risk fac-tors that increase the likelihood of conduct disorder in early and later childhood (forreviews, see Kazdin, 1995; Loeber, 1990), including within-child factors such as tem-perament, and external factors such as family interaction and attachment patterns(Dubow & Reid, 1994; Patterson, 1982; Rutter, 1990).

Recent work has reflected interest in links between cognition, information process-ing, and children’s social interactions (for reviews, see Crick & Dodge, 1994; Lochman &Dodge, 1998).

This work has been designed to investigate how aggressive behavior isinfluenced by the ways in which children process information, interpret situationalcues, and utilize previous experience (e.g., Dodge & Price, 1994; Huesmann &Guerra, 1997; Quiggle, Garber, Panak, & Dodge, 1992). Evidence from this type ofwork has led to development of clinical intervention programs that are producingsmall but consistent reductions in externalizing behaviors in clinical and other “atrisk” populations (Durlak, Fuhrman & Lampman, 1991; Guerra, Attar, & Weissberg,1997; Guerra & Slaby, 1990; Huesmann et al.,1996; Kazdin, 1996; Kazdin & Crowley,1997; Lochman, Coie, Underwood & Terry, 1993).

This article presents evidence to suggest that consideration of the literature on so-cial reasoning can extend our knowledge of cognitive links to aggression. It proposesthat development of social reasoning has particular relevance to the study of the rela-tionship between cognition and aggression in children and adolescents. Researchfindings suggest that children’s perceptions and subsequent behavior are influencedby the context and demands of an event or situation, the beliefs they have developed,and the ways in which they interpret their experiences in the context of these beliefs(Crick & Dodge, 1994; Crick & Ladd, 1990; Dorsch & Keane, 1994); all of which areimportant facets of social reasoning. Although there has been very little direct re-search assessing the social reasoning of aggressive children, it can be hypothesizedthat social cognitive interventions for aggressive behavior may be more effective if thisarea of cognition is considered. This article aims to draw from the literature on devel-opment of the social reasoning skills of children and adolescents, and from researchwork focusing on social information processing, social learning, and aggression, to in-vestigate the validity of such a hypothesis. It is not intended to provide an exhaustivereview of all the literature on social information processing or domain theory. In-stead, we take an overview of relevant research with the aim of raising questions aboutlinks between social reasoning and aggressive behavior, and suggesting directions forfuture research.

SOCIAL COGNITION AND AGGRESSION

The proposed relationship between social reasoning and aggressive behavior is de-pendent on research findings, suggesting differences in the way aggressive and nonag-gressive individuals use interactive cognitive processes to interpret social situations orevents, and subsequently develop behavioral responses. These findings underpin cur-rent theory, suggesting that cognitive processes are central to the development andmaintenance of aggressive behavior (Dodge, 1986; Huesmann & Guerra, 1997). Inparticular, it has been suggested that children who display consistent patterns of ag-

Social Reasoning: An Influence on Aggression 449

gression have deficits or biases in the attributions they make about social events, andthe decision-making processes they utilize (Bandura, 1989; Dodge, 1986; Eron, 1987).

Development of Crick and Dodge’s (1994) reformulated model of social informa-tion processing provides a framework to allow systematic examination of the relation-ship between aggression and cognition. They attempt to describe cognitive processesthat individuals use to develop a behavioral response to a given social event and/or in-teraction. Crick and Dodge suggest a 6-step cognitive process including (a) encodingof external and internal cues, (b) interpretation and mental representation of thosecues, (c) clarification or selection of a goal, (d) response access or construction, (e)response decision, and (f) behavioral enactment.

A full discussion of this model is beyond the scope of this article; however, the keyelements of the model as they relate to social reasoning and aggression are the infor-mation-processing steps describing the encoding and interpretation of external andinternal cues, and goal or outcome selection. The model proposes that during the en-coding phase, children selectively attend to, and encode, situational cues from a spe-cific event and relevant internal cues from a database of memories of past experi-ences. The interpretation stage of the model includes a number of independentprocesses which make meaning out of the cues selected, in terms of matching with in-formation already stored as mental representations; making inferences about the mo-tivations of others involved in the social interaction; and developing outcome expect-ancy predictions from the context of past experiences. Crick and Dodge (1994)suggest that the interpretation process is guided by information stored in memorysuch as social schema, scripts, and social knowledge. They also suggest that every so-cial situation the child deals with will have an ongoing impact on the developingmemory database. In step 3 of the process, individuals select a desired goal or out-come based on the information they have encoded, and the information alreadystored in memory about previous response choices. For example, a child may decidethat staying out of trouble or obtaining a desired toy is his/her desired outcome andthis will drive the following information-processing stages of response construction,response decision, and behavioral enactment.

When we examine the literature on social competence using the framework of thismodel, we see that aggressive children demonstrate information-processing biasesand/or deficits at specific steps in the sequential process. For example, Dodge, Pettit,Bates, and Valente (1995) assessed the social information-processing patterns ofabused children who were displaying symptoms of conduct disorder. They found thatthis group of children display significantly more encoding errors in terms of attendingto fewer relevant social cues, than age-matched controls. They also make more hostileattributions at the interpretation step, and were more likely to evaluate an outcomeachieved through the use of aggression as positive.

These findings are consistent with results from other research work that providestrong evidence for a relationship between deficits and biases in information processingand aggressive behavior in children and adolescents (e.g., Crick & Ladd, 1990; Feldman& Dodge, 1987; Quiggle et al., 1992). For example, empirical evidence suggests that ag-gressive individuals differ from their prosocial peers in terms of the situational cues theyextract from the environment (Dodge, 1986; Dodge & Tomlin, 1987); the attributionsof hostile intent they make when the situational cues involved are ambiguous (Crick &Ladd, 1990; Dodge & Frame, 1982; Graham, Hudley, & Williams, 1992; Lochman &Dodge, 1994); their ability to generate competent solutions to hypothetical social prob-lem situations; and their choice of aggressive as opposed to prosocial responses to hypo-


thetical social situations (Deluty, 1981; Fischler & Kendall, 1988). In addition, there areconsistent findings that aggressive children and adolescents will generate fewer solu-tions to problem situations than their prosocial peers (Dunn, Lochman, & Colder,1997; Mize & Cox, 1990; Slaby & Guerra, 1988) and are more likely to overestimate theaggression of people with whom they interact (Lochman & Dodge, 1998).

Research from the field of social learning has also led to the recognition that cognition,in the form of prior knowledge and social schemas, plays an important role in the way in-dividuals process and respond to information from the environment (Mize & Ladd, 1988;Shank & Abelson, 1977). Bandura (1989) emphasized the importance of self-regulatorybeliefs in determining an individual’s response to a social situation. For example, researchdemonstrates that response outcome expectancies, in terms of children’s beliefs that theywill obtain tangible rewards, relief from negative behavior directed at them by another in-dividual (Perry, Perry, & Rasmussen, 1986), or control over peers (Boldizar, Perry, &Perry, 1989) will increase the likelihood that they will use an aggressive action.

Expectations of negative consequences for aggressive action also impact on thelevel of aggressive behavior observed, particularly in young children (Parke, 1974).These findings have been directly linked to development of self-regulatory behavior inyoung children (Huesmann, 1988). However, as Guerra, Nucci, and Huesmann(1994) suggest, there are very few empirical studies that have focused on developmentof children’s understandings and beliefs about expected

standards of conduct

(for ex-ample, understandings about when an aggressive response may be regarded as accept-able or not), and the aggressive actions displayed by children in

real life

situations.There are, however, some correlational studies which suggest that displays of aggres-sive behavior and beliefs about its acceptability or positive consequences are linked(e.g., Egan, Monson, & Perry, 1998; Huesmann & Guerra, 1997).

These and other studies demonstrate a strong relationship between aggressive be-havior and specific cognitive processes. However, as Guerra et al. (1994) suggest, wewill obtain a better understanding of this relationship if we also consider the researchliterature examining the development of social reasoning in children and adoles-cents. For example, using the Crick and Dodge (1994) framework, it can be suggestedthat the social reasoning skills a child brings to a social event may impact on the firstthree stages of information processing. Evidence is presented later in the paper thatdemonstrates that domain categorization, which underpins the social reasoning skillsa child develops, will impact on the situational cues the child attends to, and the usethe child makes of internal cues, scripts, and past experiences to interpret a situation.It may also influence the priority a child gives to particular goals and outcomes interms of their desirability. That is, social reasoning developed through exposure to re-sponse outcomes, selective attention to cues, and the internalization of values andstandards will influence a child’s judgments and response choices in social situations.It is in this process that we can link social reasoning and aggression.

In addition, social learning in terms of prior knowledge, experience, and the devel-opment of beliefs about expected standards of conduct will affect the knowledge baseand development of social reasoning skills (Turiel, 1983, 1987). For example, priorexperience as a victim, or consistent exposure to aggressive events may lead to devel-opmental change in the priorities children place on personal safety and protection ofpossessions when attempting to understand and respond to a wide range of social situ-ations. This, in turn, may increase the likelihood that these children make social judg-ments that promote an aggressive response in these situations. In contrast, childrenwho have exposure to situations where expected standards of conduct are empha-


sized, or the consequences of actions in terms of harm or fairness to others are dis-cussed, are likely to develop different priorities in their social reasoning, leading tomore effective problem solving (Barret, Rapee, Dadds, & Ryan, 1996). Recent re-search undertaken by Crane-Ross, Tisak, and Tisak (1998) linking beliefs, social rea-soning, and aggression provides some support for these general contentions and willbe discussed in more detail later in this article.

THE DOMAIN MODEL OF SOCIAL REASONING

General Overview

Before considering the scanty literature on aggression and social reasoning, it is im-portant to focus on empirical work examining the domain model of social reasoningas presented by Turiel (1983), which underpins current thought about the develop-ment of social reasoning and provides links to social information processing. Thismodel suggests there are three distinct conceptual domains that individuals access inthe process of social understanding and reasoning. The

personal

domain is related pri-marily to an individual’s interpretation of an issue or event in terms of its impact onthe self; the

social conventional

domain accounts for an individual’s understanding of asituation in terms of social norms and expectations; and the

moral

domain reflects anindividual’s recognition of a situation or event in terms of issues of human rights, wel-fare, and fairness. Tisak and Turiel (1984) identified a further

prudential

domain. Thisdomain describes an individual’s understanding of issues primarily relating to per-sonal safety. Helwig, Tisak, and Turiel (1990) go on to propose that the developmen-tal progression of each domain is dependent on an individual’s previous social inter-actions and experiences, and suggest that each has a separate developmentalframework and trajectory.

According to this model, individuals make social judgments by accessing and inte-grating knowledge across these domains. The salience of each domain will vary, de-pending on the prior experience and current social interactions of the individual, andthis will determine his/her final judgment (Helwig et al., 1990; for reviews, see Sme-tana, 1995; Tisak, 1995). It is thought that judgments about how to respond in a par-ticular situation will reflect individual and situational biases implicit in that event,which may increase or diminish the salience of each domain (Guerra et al., 1994).

The common research paradigm used to investigate children’s and adolescents’ so-cial reasoning, within the framework of this model, has been to present subjects with

prototypical

situations: that is, situations identified as focusing on issues specific to indi-vidual domains. For example, prototypic moral items include situations where the sub-ject is questioned about one child hitting another child, or one child being unfair insome way to another. In contrast, social conventional items focus on situations such aswearing the “wrong” clothes to school or not complying with a specific rule. Subjectsthen make criterion judgments about the generalizability, seriousness, and indepen-dence from rules or authority of the action sequence. Finally, justifications or reasonsfor the answers given in their judgments of the social situation presented are sought.

Moral and Social Conventional Domains

Using variations of this paradigm, there are consistent research findings, from a largenumber of studies, that indicate that children make judgments and classify actions in


terms of the moral or social conventional domains from a very young age (Nucci &Turiel, 1978; Smetana, 1984; Smetana & Braeges, 1990; Smetana, Schlagman, & Ad-ams, 1993; Tisak & Turiel, 1988; Zelazo, Helwig, & Lau, 1996). For example, proto-typic moral transgressions are consistently identified as transgressions by children asyoung as 3, even when the context of the act is changed (e.g., is the act/behavior stillwrong at home, at another school/daycare, or in another country?), or the individualsand/or authority figures altered (e.g., is the act/behavior wrong in the presence/ab-sence of a teacher/parent?). This is in contrast to transgressions encompassed by thesocial conventional domain. Children identify these transgressions as specific to thecontext in which they are placed. For example, children may judge them as wrong in aschool environment but “okay” at home, or wrong if a teacher is present, but not if aparent is the authority figure or the teacher is absent (Nucci & Turiel, 1978; Sander-son & Siegal, 1988; Smetana, 1981, 1984, 1985; Smetana & Braeges, 1990; Smetana etal., 1993; Turiel, 1983; Zelazo et al., 1996). In general terms, the findings suggest thattransgressions involving the moral domain of social reasoning are consistently identi-fied by children, as young as 3 years, as generalizably wrong. In contrast, judgmentsabout social conventional transgressions are context-specific. In social informationprocessing terms, it appears that children are placing the event in the context of a so-cial reasoning domain, which is influencing the interpretation of cues and responsedecision.

A similar response pattern emerges when examining rule and/or authority depen-dency. When preschool children respond to the question of whether a prototypicalmoral transgression is still wrong in the absence of a specific rule, or if the designatedauthority figure is absent, the common response is in the affirmative. Judgmentsabout social conventional transgressions provide a different answer. Children asyoung as 4 indicate that the act would be permissible in the absence of a specific rule,or if an authority figure was not present or said it was acceptable (Catron & Masters,1993; Nucci & Turiel, 1993; Siegal & Storey, 1985; Smetana et al., 1993).

Finally, children’s reasoning about the seriousness of a transgression or the amountof deserved punishment for a transgression also appears to be contingent on socialreasoning domains. For example, when children evaluate moral and social conven-tional transgressions that frequently occur in preschool settings, they judge moraltransgressions as more deserving of punishment and, in general, more serious (e.g.,Smetana, 1988; Smetana & Braeges, 1990). Tisak and Turiel (1988) investigated age-related differences in judgments of the seriousness of transgressions by varying theoutcomes of moral and social conventional events. They asked children to comparetransgressions from both these domains, which varied in terms of the seriousness ofthe event and outcome. Specifically, children made criterion judgments about moraltransgressions perceived as having a minor consequence (e.g., stealing an eraser), or amajor consequence (e.g., hitting someone), with a social conventional transgressionwith a major outcome (e.g., wearing pajamas to school). When asked to choose whichtransgression children might be

expected

to commit, children of all ages concludedthat most children would be likely to perpetrate the minor moral transgression. Incontrast, when children were asked what they

should

do, a majority chose the majorsocial conventional transgression over either the minor or the major moral transgres-sions. In addition, children judged both moral transgressions as more wrong thansocial conventional transgressions. Interestingly, Tisak and Turiel also found someage-related differences in social reasoning that also have implications within the socialinformation-processing framework described by Crick and Dodge (1994). Older chil-


dren (10 years) appeared to coordinate information on outcomes with domain dis-tinctions to modify their judgments on seriousness. This is in contrast to 6- and 7-year-olds, who made more rigid decisions based on the domains of social reasoning, ignor-ing the outcomes of the transgressions.

This type of age-related change supports the position that there is ongoing develop-ment within each of the social reasoning domains, dependent to some extent on pre-vious experience and situational considerations. The work of Siegal and Storey (1985)supports this conclusion. They found that children recently enrolled at day care con-sidered social rule transgressions as more worthy of punishment than did childrenwho had been in day care for 18 months. However, in terms of judgments of serious-ness of prototypical moral transgressions, there was no difference between the twogroups of children. In general, the experimental findings suggest that social judg-ments are based on fundamental differences in the reasoning within each domain,rather than quantitative judgments based on the seriousness of the transgression.

Personal and Prudential Domains

There has been less investigation into patterns of reasoning linked to the personaland prudential domains. However, the research evidence to date suggests that consis-tent differential reasoning patterns are found when comparing situations encompass-ing the prudential and personal domains with the social conventional and moral do-mains. As described earlier in this article, the personal domain is comprised of thosesocial actions that individuals deem to be within their own personal control and with-out impact on others or society in general. For example, issues such as choice offriends or physical appearance are considered within the realm of personal prefer-ence rather than morality or social convention (Arsenio, 1988).

Nucci (1981) was the first to examine conceptual distinctions between the personal,moral, and social conventional domains of social reasoning. In this initial study, heemployed a sorting task to evaluate adolescents’ and children’s judgments about the“wrongness” of rule violations within each domain. He expected that actions withinthe personal domain would be judged as “least wrong” or “not wrong” in contrast tomoral transgressions, which would be considered as “most wrong” in the sorting task.This hypothesis was based on proposals that actions in the personal domain did not af-fect others, were at the discretion of the individual, and should not be subject to rules.The findings supported his hypothesis. Children ranked moral transgressions as“more wrong” than social conventional transgressions. In turn, social conventionaltransgressions were ranked as “more wrong” than transgressions of rules imposed onmatters regarded as an individual’s personal choice.

Justifications of decisions provided further support for judgment differentiation be-tween the three domains. There was a significant correlation between ratings of the seri-ousness of the act and domain categorization, with acts rated as “least wrong” located inthe personal domain. At all ages, justification of an act as “least wrong” either identifiedthat the consequences of the act would affect only the individual committing the act, orindicated that the act was a personal matter and should not be subject to rule restrictions.Nucci (1981) concluded that personal issues are organized in a conceptual frameworkseparate from the moral and social conventional domains. He went on to suggest that in-dividuals employed a common set of criteria to make judgments about social situations,but proposed that they vary in their interpretation of which events fit which criteria.

Similarly, Tisak (1993) questioned children’s reasoning on issues of punishment,


importance, and authority, and provided evidence to suggest that the personal do-main is salient to children at a very young age. Results indicated that the majority ofchildren considered peers who violated both moral and personal rules were deservingof punishment. However, children did not evaluate the seriousness of the two types ofviolations in the same way, with moral transgressions judged as deserving greater pun-ishment than personal violations. If we reflect back on the literature comparing rea-soning about prototypical moral and social convention transgressions, we can see inthis result a similar pattern of differential reasoning occurring between prototypicalevents drawn from the moral, social conventional, and personal domains.

Although domains are salient for even very young children, Tisak (1993) reportssome age-related differences in social judgments. Her findings suggest that youngerchildren do make differential judgments between prototypic events drawn from differ-ent domains. However, they are more likely than older children to focus their within-domain judgments on the magnitude of the consequence of a particular action, ratherthan taking account of social interaction or authority issues. It appears that childrenuse additional contextual information in social judgments as they mature.

Tisak and Turiel (1984) first described the prudential domain when they consid-ered children’s concepts of rules relating to events that might prove harmful either tothemselves or to others. They identified that it was useful to investigate this contrast,as there is a meaningful difference between the two types of events. That is, moralevents relate to interactions between people (e.g., harm resulting from one personhitting another), and prudential events impact primarily on the self (e.g., harm in-flicted on self due to carelessness). Using a clinical interview strategy, they examinedthe judgments children made about stories that involved physical harm to anotherchild, property loss, and harm to self.

As with the moral/personal domain contrast, their findings indicate that children fromthe ages of 6 to 10 years evaluate moral and prudential transgressions differently. A major-ity of children indicated that it would be wrong to violate moral rules, whereas they wereless negative in evaluating violations of prudential rules. Similar differences for rule con-tingency (would it be all right to perform the act in the absence of a rule?) were found.Children indicated that moral transgressions would continue to be wrong in the absenceof a rule whereas prudential transgressions were permissible in these circumstances.

As may have been expected, Tisak and Turiel (1984) also found differences in chil-dren’s judgments about the generalizability of moral and prudential rules, and in thetypes of justifications they used in their responses. For example, most children justified ap-plication of moral rules on the basis of others’ welfare. In contrast, the main justificationused for prudential rules focused on issues pertaining to the negative consequences of theaction to self. In their conclusions, Tisak and Turiel comment that age-related differencesfound in criterion judgments about moral and prudential events can be explained by pro-posing that with age, children increasingly consider self-harm to be under personal con-trol. Similar findings by Smetana (1988) and Stoddart and Turiel (1985) confirm thatchildren and adolescents develop a set of non-moral and non-conventional events that arematters of individual choice. Judgment criteria in this domain are commonly based onreasoning related to a lack of harm to others and personal prerogative.

Domain Classification

In general terms, the contention that consistent criteria are used to classify transgres-sions once the event or action has been placed into either the moral, social conven-


tional, or personal domains is well supported by the research evidence. However,Nucci (1981) suggests that individuals will vary in the actions and events they catego-rize as associated with specific domains. He proposes that this is largely dependent ontheir interpretation of their life experiences. It is this concept that suggests a stronglink between the first three steps of the social information processing model and do-main theory. For example, Berkowitz, Guerra, and Nucci (1991) found that certain in-dividuals regard particular actions or events (e.g., the recreational use of some typesof illegal drugs) as matters of personal choice and illegitimately regulated by socialrules. Thus, response decisions and social judgments made about such actions orevents are dependent upon an individual’s interpretation of the events and subse-quent domain categorization.

Recent observational studies by Nucci and Weber (1995) and Tisak, Nucci, and Jan-kowski (1996) contribute to the discussion of links between the development of domaincategorization, social judgments, social information processing, and experience. Nucciand Weber examined “in-home” interactions between children, aged 3 and 4 years, andtheir mothers. In this research, interactions involving moral, conventional, personal,and prudential events were recorded across different contexts in the home (morning,free play, evening, and bedtime). Observers reported that mothers were more willing tonegotiate personal issues with their children than items from other domains. They alsoobserved that children were rarely prepared to argue with their mother over moral, so-cial conventional, or prudential issues. Contrary to this pattern of behavior, even veryyoung children made frequent challenges to their parent over personal issues. In thiscase, the challenging behavior was determined, to some extent, by the child’s categori-zation of an event within the personal domain, and by past experience.

Using a similar research strategy, Tisak, Nucci, and Jankowski (1996) observed pre-school children in a school setting. In this study, observers focused on moral and pru-dential transgressions occurring naturally in the school playground. They found thatthe majority of moral transgressions involved physical harm and property loss, withvery few relating to property damage and psychological harm. Tisak et al. used this in-formation to explain earlier research findings demonstrating that very young childrenused the consequences of an event to justify rating transgressions involving physicalharm to be more serious than those involving property damage (Tisak, 1993). Tisak etal. go on to propose that young children more frequently experience physical harmand property loss (which often involves an negative interaction with another child) asvictims and, as such, the level of consequence of an event is particularly salient tothem when making a social judgment or domain placement. However, as childrengrow older, other aspects of the experiences acquire salience and impact on their in-terpretation of the event, their social judgment, and subsequent response decisions.

Tisak and her colleagues (1996) also observed that moral physical harm events(physical harm to another) and prudential acts (harm to self) occur in the free-playenvironment with equal frequency. If we take the simplistic view of a link between ex-posure to real-life events and development of differential social reasoning, we wouldexpect similar judgments to be made about these two types of transgressions. This isnot the case. There is strong evidence suggesting that children make differential judg-ments on dimension of seriousness about events that occur in each of these two do-mains (Tisak, 1993; Tisak & Turiel, 1984). Tisak et al. (1996) suggest that children’sjudgments are based on a more complex interpretation of real life events. For exam-ple, they consider the basis for the moral versus prudential distinction in social rea-soning to be children’s understanding of the social relational features of moral trans-


gressions, which have an impact on others. In contrast, prudential events, which bydefinition only impact on the self, are interpreted as less serious. Again, we would ex-pect behavioral outcomes to vary with this judgment. These conclusions are congru-ent with Turiel’s (1978, 1983) earlier proposition that:

Responses are not unilaterally determined by stimuli and therefore, knowledge does notstem directly from experience. The child obtains knowledge by acting upon and abstract-ing from events. In addition to experiencing events, individuals select, interpret and sys-tematize elements of their experience. (Turiel, 1983, p. 33)

It appears that elements of an event that individuals select and interpret to use as thebasis for their social judgment are similar to the information individuals use in thefirst three stages of social information processing. On this basis, the relationshipfound between social information processing and aggressive behavior (e.g., Dorsch &Keane, 1994; Quiggle et al., 1992; Weiss, Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 1992) may point tolinks between social reasoning and aggressive behavior.

Mixed Domain Research

The complexities of social reasoning as discussed by Tisak et al. (1996) have been ex-amined more recently in what is known as mixed domain research. In the research re-viewed up until this point, we can see that children begin to make domain distinctionsin their social reasoning at about the age of 36 months. As children develop, the crite-ria for making social judgments become increasingly stable and decision makingmore predictable when assessed by prototypic events from each of the domains. Un-fortunately, most real-life situations are more complex than the prototypic events fre-quently presented to children (Turiel & Smetana, 1984). This problem has been rec-ognized, and research examining more complex domain judgments may help toprovide more relevant and realistic answers to questions about the relationship be-tween aggression and social reasoning. Again, we need to examine mixed domain re-search with the “normal” population for clues, as there is a paucity of mixed domainresearch using aggressive status as a variable.

By definition, mixed domain events contain elements from more than one socialreasoning domain. Turiel, Hildebrandt, and Wainryb (1991) concluded that thesenon-prototypic situations require individuals to undertake the conceptual task of co-ordinating and prioritizing different types of domain judgments in order to developan effective response decision. Research findings support this conclusion. Children’sjudgments about mixed domain events appear to be influenced by the context withinwhich an event takes place, and the intentions and affect of the participants (Helwig,Hildebrandt, & Turiel, 1995; Killen, 1990; Turiel et al., 1991).

In their discussion, Crane and Tisak (1995) present a number of contextual factorsthat appear to influence social judgments and their justifications within specific do-mains. For example, they identify research evidence suggesting that the type of conse-quence, and children’s familiarity with the events presented to them, would influencejudgments about the seriousness of moral transgressions. They also highlight findingsthat suggest that judgments within the conventional domain are affected by the au-thority figure (e.g., peer, parent, or teacher) making and enforcing the rule. For ex-ample, children regard transgressions of mothers’ rules as more serious than trans-gressions of teachers’ rules.


When discussing these findings, Crane and Tisak (1995) suggest that these contex-tual variations found in judgments within social reasoning domains are linked to anindividual’s recognition that many events reflect aspects of more than one domain.Based on this premise, they investigated the social reasoning of young children (pre-school, year one and year three) and found that all groups of children identified themoral and conventional components of mixed domain events. However, they alsofound developmental differences in the salience of the different domains. Results in-dicated that older children responded to the moral dimensions of the mixed domaintasks by making judgments that mixed domain transgressions were wrong, irrespectiveof whether an authority figure permitted or prohibited the event. This is in contrast tothe younger children, who more frequently focused on the social conventional as-pects of the transgression, with judgments of permissibility being dependent onwhether an authority figure permitted such an act. This suggests that, when makingdomain categorizations, there is a developmental progression in the way that childrenextract and interpret information from complex events.

Crane and Tisak (1995) link these findings to the ways in which adults and childreninteract when transgressions occur. That is, children learn to interpret which are themost important features of a transgression when making a social judgment. Earlier re-search (e.g., Dunn & Munn, 1985; Nucci, 1982; Turiel, 1983) concluded that youngchildren’s understanding of the underlying social judgments involved in transgres-sions from each domain is affected by the responses given by adults to children whentransgressions occur. For example, when discussing a moral transgression with a child,teachers and parents tend to focus on issues of the resulting harm to others, or onfairness. In contrast, when a social conventional transgression occurs, the authorityfigure primarily focuses on the rule prohibiting the behavior. Nucci (1984) also foundthat older children were more responsive to teacher intervention after a transgres-sion, when children perceive the intervention as congruent with their underpinningdomain categorization of the event. It is worthy to note that if aggressive children clas-sify mixed domain events in atypical ways, then perhaps the responses of authority fig-ures are not supporting the development of effective social reasoning skills. Future re-search needs to examine the ways in which aggressive children understand real-lifeevents, and this knowledge may then contribute to the development of more mean-ingful interactions between authority figures and children who consistently display ag-gressive behavior.

In Summary

The research reviewed to this point presents consistent findings, which invite the sug-gestion that it may be possible to identify contrasts in the social reasoning of aggres-sive children and those who are not. Remember, regulation of aggressive acts wouldgenerally be considered to fit into the moral domain of social reasoning, as such actsinvolve issues of

harm to others.

The research reported in this article demonstrates theconsistency with which children as young as 3 consider issues of

harm

and

others’ welfare

to be wrong, independent of rules and authority, and worthy of more severe punish-ment than any other type of transgression. Our knowledge of links between social cog-nition and aggression—specifically social information processing variations in termsof attributional biases, encoding of cues, and response decisions—leads to the pro-posal that children who consistently display aggressive behavior may also be interpret-ing and categorizing events within social reasoning domains differently from children


who display prosocial skills. This difference may lead to behavioral responses thatseem appropriate to the child, given that individual’s priorities in terms of social judg-ments about the event, but are inappropriate in terms of general behavioral expecta-tions. Furthermore, the suggestion that social experiences of aggressive children haveled to different developmental trajectories within each of the domains, or interpreta-tional biases in the way that they give priority in their social judgments to domain-linked facets of complex social situations, appears to have some validity. This in turnmay lead to differences in the way these children respond to the social situations thatthey encounter, particularly those that might involve harm to others. Such proposalsare supported by conclusions made by Smetana (1995), who highlights research find-ings suggesting that there are individual variations in the priorities placed on moralconsiderations in certain situations, with some individuals choosing to focus on otheraspects of the situation.

LINKS BETWEEN MORAL DEVELOPMENT, SOCIAL REASONING, AND AGRESSION

Moral development plays a major role in behavioral regulation (Smetana, 1995), andin an early review of the literature examining moral cognition and moral action, Blasi(1980) concluded that the empirical research provides very strong evidence of “moralreasoning differences between delinquents and non-delinquents” (p. 37) with delin-quents demonstrating “less mature” forms of moral reasoning.

Research into the early developmental patterns of aggression (e.g., Fergusson, Hor-wood, & Lynskey, 1995; for reviews, see Campbell, 1994; Keenan & Shaw, 1994; Landy& Peters, 1992; Offord, Boyd, & Racine, 1991) suggests that development of social rea-soning in young children can be linked to moral development and other cognitiveskills that are linked to the self-regulation of behavior. At an early age children beginto internalize values and standards (Grusec & Goodnow, 1994; Kochanska & Aksan,1995; Kochanska, Aksan, & Koenig, 1995; Kochanska, DeVet, Goldman, Murray, &Putnam, 1994; Beeghly & Cicchetti, 1994). It is commonly accepted that child-rearingstrategies have a major impact on this internalization and the development of earlymoral cognition, with the young child using parental standards as a model for moraldecision making (Hoffman, 1984; Hoffman & Saltzstein, 1967; Zahn-Waxler, Robin-son, & Emde, 1992). In particular, inductive parenting styles contribute to the devel-opment of empathic responses (Ijzendoorn, 1997). Emergence of empathy is com-monly regarded as a first step in moral development, and has been linked to thedevelopment of prosocial behavior (e.g., Eisenberg, Fabes, Carlo, & Speer, 1993). Asdiscussed earlier, domain categorization requires the child to interpret informationregarding social events using prior experience, expectations, and beliefs, and the inte-gration of parental and societal standards are part of this internalization process(Smetana, 1995). Children who are less empathic are more likely to make judgmentsthat are not within the moral domain of social reasoning. That is, they will be less con-cerned with “others’ welfare” and more likely to emphasize other considerations, suchas “personal need.”

From a very early age, young children also begin to categorize actions as right andwrong (Smetana et al., 1993). Huesmann and Guerra (1997) examined developmentof the self-regulatory beliefs of children aged between 7 and 10 years using a new scalespecifically designed to assess normative beliefs about aggression. They found a devel-opmental change in children’s approval of aggression, with some children consider-


ing the use of aggression as more acceptable as they grew older. Such change in theirapproval of aggression correlated significantly with increases in aggressive behavior.Of further interest was the finding that individual differences in the frequency of ob-served aggressive behavior in older children were predicted by their normative beliefsat a younger age. Congruent with these findings, observational data suggest that chil-dren who develop strong self-regulatory behavior demonstrate consistent reductionsin physically aggressive behavior (Cummings, Iannotti, & Zahn-Waxler, 1989; Landy &Peters, 1992).

As described earlier in this article, young children begin to make consistent social judg-ments based on development of social reasoning skills at the same time that self-regulatorybehavior begins to emerge. By the age of 36 months, children consistently discriminatebetween social situations by suggesting that appropriate responses to some events are de-pendent on authority or social rules and are specific to that particular situation. Other re-sponses are deemed appropriate by reflecting on more general concerns of harm, fair-ness, welfare, or rights, and are not considered dependent on rules, or identified asspecific to a particular environment (e.g., Nucci & Turiel, 1978; Smetana, 1981; Smetanaet al., 1993). This age-related link suggests that a relationship exists between the develop-ment of social reasoning and the emergence of self-regulatory behavior.

The research literature also provides other support for a general link between be-havior and domains of social reasoning. For example, Smetana (1982) found thatpregnant women’s decisions about whether or not to have an abortion were directlyrelated to whether the individual viewed such an action as having a moral conse-quence involving taking the life of another human being, or considered it a questionof personal choice with no underlying moral considerations. Nucci, Guerra, and Lee(1991) found similar domain discriminations in adolescents’ reasoning about druguse. The majority of adolescents indicated that they perceived drug use to be a ques-tion of personal choice. When a comparison of the views of high drug-users and thoseof adolescents who identified as low-frequency users was made, a significant differencein categorization within the personal domain was demonstrated. High drug-usersidentified drug use as a personal issue and considered it

less harmful

and

less wrong.

Incontrast, low-use drug users emphasized prudential concerns involving self-harm.

Turiel (1987) and Guerra et al. (1994) were the first to make theoretical links be-tween aggressive behavior and aspects of social reasoning. Guerra and her colleaguesproposed a relationship between aggressive behavior and moral reasoning. That is,they hypothesized that aggressive responses are dependent, to some extent, on an in-dividual’s understanding of the moral aspects of a situation or event, and the prioritythey give to these understandings. They go on to suggest that the extent to which anindividual focuses on, and gives priority to, issues of harm or welfare in a given situa-tion will have an influence on the judgment and response a person makes to that par-ticular situation. For example, when a child is confronted with a social situation thathas a moral dimension (e.g., wanting to take a desired toy from another child), thechild who chooses to respond aggressively is more likely to have recognized the situa-tion in terms of the personal domain (his/her right to have the toy), as opposed to achild who responds in a prosocial way, reflecting a greater emphasis on the moral do-main of social reasoning (the importance of not hurting other children when at-tempting to obtain the desired toy). Turiel (1987) reached a similar conclusion, sug-gesting that aggressive actions and the consequences of those actions should beplaced in the “context of how individuals perceive and conceive the social world andsocial relationships”(p. 98).


There have been relatively few studies directly investigating links between the do-main model of social reasoning and aggressive behavior, but the findings do providesome evidence for such a relationship. For example, Guerra and Nucci’s research (ascited in Guerra et al., 1994) examined the relationship between aggression and judg-ments of whether particular actions or events were primarily issues of morality, socialconvention, prudence, or personal choice. They found that adolescents who reportedthey indulged in frequent aggressive acts were more likely to identify prototypicalmoral situations, such as hitting or hurting another person as matters of personalchoice than were non-aggressive adolescents. They also report that differences be-tween aggressive and non-aggressive adolescents in terms of their judgments aboutnon-moral issues were not significant. Based on this evidence, Guerra et al. (1994)concluded that the “tendency to engage in aggressive or delinquent behavior is afunction of its domain placement, and that more aggressive individuals can be charac-terized by an overextension of the personal domain” (p. 24).

Crane-Ross et al. (1998) also examined whether the social cognitive beliefs of ado-lescents were associated with moral and social conventional rule-violating behaviors.Results indicated a specific link between an adolescent’s beliefs within each domain ofsocial reasoning and the types and level of rule-violating behavior. Using self and peerratings of social behavior, the researchers found that adolescents’ beliefs about moraland social conventional rule violations in terms of the legitimacy, the outcome value,and the impact on others of such actions, predicted both the level of peer- and self-rated aggression and social conventional rule violations, with ratings of aggressive be-havior best predicted by beliefs and values regarding aggression. Similarly, self-reported beliefs within the conventional domain strongly predicted social conventionalviolations, rather than the adolescent’s beliefs and values associated with aggression.

Although not directly investigating whether displays of aggressive or convention-vio-lating behavior are related to the classification of an event in the personal domain,findings of this research support the contention that variations in the patterns of do-main classification influence behavior, and are linked to the social reasoning of an in-dividual within specific domains. For example, an important predictor of aggressive be-havior, as assessed by both peer- and self-rating scales, was the adolescents’ belief thatthe act was legitimate in the circumstances presented. In the vignettes used to assess be-liefs about aggression, peer provocation provided the context for aggressive acts. Un-der these circumstances, such events might invite consideration of both personal andmoral domain criteria. Comparison of ratings between adolescents with high levels ofaggression and their less aggressive peers suggests that judgments about the legitimacyof the event may have been dependent on whether priority was given to social reason-ing criteria within the personal domain or to those within the moral domain.

Early research by Nucci and Herman (1982) directly investigated the relationshipbetween behavioral disorders and social reasoning in young children. The researchersused prototypic events to examine social reasoning, and although there are somemethodological problems with this study involving subject selection, it is one of veryfew to focus specifically on the social reasoning of aggressive children. Using the fa-miliar experimental paradigm and analysis, they found that both aggressive and “nor-mal” children ranked moral transgressions as more serious than conventional trans-gressions. Similarly, social conventional breaches ranked as more serious thantransgressions of rules that governed events generally considered as within the per-sonal domain. However, when response justifications were examined within each do-main classification, Nucci and Herman found that participants in the control group


were significantly more likely than the aggressive group to justify their response usingan

unjust act

explanation. The aggressive participants were significantly more likelythan the controls to use a

categorical wrong

justification. This type of justification in-volved statements that an act is

always wrong

or

always prohibited

with no further elabo-ration. Although not discussed by the authors of the article, it can be hypothesizedthat this type of response would more logically fit into the rule-driven social conven-tional domain, that is, the act is wrong because a

rule

says it is wrong.Another interesting result from this work was the finding that the aggressive group

did not identify all the prototypic moral transgressions presented to them as wrong ir-respective of rules. They considered two transgressions, involving hitting and not shar-ing abundant goods, as appropriate if there was no specific rule in place to cover theevent. This contrasts with the social reasoning of prosocial peers who identified allprototypic moral transgressions as wrong in the absence of rules or authority. Nucciand Herman (1982) explained this contrast by suggesting that the aggressive groupjustified their decision by taking a more personal perspective in their social reasoning,rather than recognizing the moral concerns intrinsic to the event. Results also sug-gested that the aggressive group was more dependent on the social conventional or

rule-driven

criteria of the events presented to them than the control group. This grouprecognized that acts of aggression or not sharing were still not legitimate in the ab-sence of specific rules or authority figures.

The final significant result also demonstrates a clear contrast between the domainclassification decisions made by aggressive children and the control group. In a counter-intuitive finding, Nucci and Herman (1982) determined that aggressive children weresignificantly less likely than their prosocial peers to judge prototypic personal items asmatters within their personal control. That is, relative to normal subjects, aggressive chil-dren were less likely to consider that some actions were a matter of personal discretion.These findings clearly contrast with the later work described by Guerra and Nucci(1992) (as cited in Guerra et al., 1994), who suggested their results indicated that anoverextension of the personal domain contributes to displays of aggressive behavior.However, the Nucci and Herman (1982) work examined reasoning about prototypicevents, whereas the Guerra and Nucci (1992) research considered responses to morecomplex issues. In addition, Nucci and Herman assessed the social reasoning of youngchildren whereas Guerra and Nucci examined judgments made by adolescents. Perhapsdifferences in the social reasoning patterns identified in these two pieces of research islinked to developmental changes that have not yet been investigated experimentally.

Based on these research findings, we can reach a tentative conclusion that there aredistinctions between the social reasoning of aggressive and more prosocial children.To recapitulate, research evidence suggests that children as young as 3 and 4 years,drawn from the normal population, demonstrate consistent patterns of social reason-ing reflecting their understanding of moral, social conventional, personal, and pru-dential considerations. It is also clear that children make judgments about mixed do-main events based on the priorities they give to each social reasoning domain, with,for the most part, moral considerations taking priority over social conventional andpersonal domain criteria. Personal considerations will also take priority over judg-ments reflecting the social conventional restrictions, if older children and adolescentsdecide that an event is within their personal control. These judgments, in turn, havean impact on behavioral outcomes (Tisak & Jankowski, 1996).

Notwithstanding lack of specific research, it can be suggested that there are devel-opmental differences in the way aggressive children make judgments about events


(particularly mixed domain events) when compared to the judgments expected fromtheir prosocial peers. It is hypothesized that young aggressive children are more likelyto place transgressions involving aggression toward others within the social conven-tional domain, focusing on rule- and authority-based criteria, whereas their prosocialpeers are more likely to take account of criteria drawn from the moral domain. A si-milar conclusion can be made for events considered by prosocial children as withintheir personal discretion. Aggressive children are less likely to categorize these eventsas within the personal domain, and are likely to consider such events as falling withinthe social conventional domain of social reasoning. That is, they are looking for fixedrules and authority figures to guide their decision making. In contrast, aggressive ado-lescents are more likely to consider events as within their own personal domain andfocus on criteria from within this criteria when making judgments about the legiti-macy of aggressive behavior. These conclusions have yet to be tested empirically, butcan be considered legitimate based on the research reported in this article.

CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS

The proposed relationship between social reasoning and aggressive behavior has clearimplications for social cognitive treatment approaches of aggression. Currently, linksbetween aggressive behavior and deficits and distortions in problem-solving skills, at-tributions of hostile intent particularly in ambiguous situations, and negative self-statements, have led to the development of intervention programs that have becomeknown generically as “problem-solving skills training.” The proposition that aggres-sion is not directly triggered by environmental events but is dependent on a numberof cognitive processes involving perception and information processing is the basis forthese treatment programs. Consequently, problem-solving skills training has involvedthe development of cognitive problem-solving skills and prosocial behavioral reper-toires (for a detailed discussion of the process, see Kazdin, 1996).

Although criticized for the outcome measures used, most treatment studies havesuggested that this type of approach has the potential to reduce aggressive behavior inchildren and adolescents (e.g., Guerra & Slaby, 1990). However, reductions in aggres-sive behavior, although consistent, are relatively small and many children continue toremain outside the range of normative behavior relative to peers of the same age andsex (e.g., Kazdin, Bass, Siegel, & Thomas, 1989; Kazdin & Crowley, 1997).

From the information presented in this article, it is suggested that treatment ap-proaches aimed at changing the perceptions and problem-solving strategies of aggres-sive children have not focused on the development of more effective social reasoningskills. Such approaches need to ensure that the moral domain of social reasoning be-comes more salient in the behavioral decision-making of aggressive children. Cognitivetreatment approaches must work at changing the characteristic ways in which aggressivechildren make judgments about events and transgressions in terms of social domainmembership. Such judgments will have a strong influence on the situational cues en-coded, the ways in which these cues are interpreted, and the identification of socially de-sirable outcomes. In addition, priorities given by aggressive children to particular socialreasoning criteria in mixed domain or complex events must also be a consideration inany social cognitive treatment approach. Increasing the saliency of the moral domainfor aggressive children in complex real-life events should have an impact on the waysin which they interpret the social events they confront and their behavioral response.


These considerations can be seen as especially important to intervention ap-proaches given research that suggests that children are more responsive to directionsby teachers and parents when the content of the direction is congruent with the do-main classification of the event by the child (Killen, Breton, Ferguson, & Handler,1994; Nucci, 1984). For example, if a child classifies an event within the moral do-main, then intervention and direction citing reasons of preventing harm or ensuringfairness to others have been shown as relevant to the child and effective in modifyingbehavior. In contrast, if the direction is incongruent with the domain classification,for example a direction citing general implications for harm when the child perceivesthe transgression as related to social conventional rules, he/she is less likely to con-sider the direction relevant or consider the intervention effective. If there are consis-tent patterns of difference in the domain classification of events between aggressivechildren and their prosocial peers, perhaps the ongoing interventions that are madeby teachers and parents are often perceived as irrelevant and ineffective (or both) bythe aggressive child.

DEVELOPMENTAL IMPLICATIONS

Longitudinal studies mapping changes in the social reasoning skills of young childrendemonstrating stable aggressive behavior is an important direction for research. Suchinformation may help both researchers and clinicians to understand the ways in whichsuch children make social judgments and behavioral decisions. Much of the research onaggression has focused on adolescents or children in middle and late primary school(e.g., Guerra & Slaby, 1990; Loeber & Schmaling 1885; Quiggle et al.,1992; Tisak & Jan-kowski, 1996). This is understandable, particularly when investigating the relationshipbetween cognition and aggression, because young children often lack the metacognitiveskills to allow them to report their own beliefs and decision-making strategies.

There is, however, an increasing perception among researchers that an understand-ing of the early developmental trajectory of likely conduct disorder is critical in devel-oping effective treatment approaches. In a review of the research literature, Kazdin(1995) suggests that displays of severe aggression, noncompliance, and inattention invery young children are often the precursors to social and behavioral problems inmiddle childhood, adolescence, and even adulthood. He goes on to suggest that em-pirical evidence indicates that toddlerhood, the preschool period, and the early yearsof school can be viewed as critical in the development of long-term antisocial and ag-gressive behavior (e.g., Campbell, 1994; Gagnon, Craig, Tremblay, Zhou, & Vitaro,1995). It appears that by understanding the early developmental pathways of aggres-sion, more focused interventions that have a long-term impact on reducing the num-ber of children and adolescents displaying severe aggression and antisocial behaviormay be developed.

In more recent years there have been attempts to develop methodologies that allowdirect examination of the cognitive processes of young aggressive children (e.g.,Campbell et al., 1991; Kochanska, 1995; Zahn-Waxler et al., 1994). As described ear-lier, children as young as 3 have participated in social reasoning research with consis-tent and replicable results. Use of observational methodologies, props, interactiveplay strategies, and individual clinical interviews will allow a better understanding ofthe developmental patterns of social reasoning and social cognition in very young ag-gressive children.


This knowledge should allow the development of more effective early interventionstrategies, aimed at reducing inappropriate aggressive behavior in children during thepreschool and early primary school period. The modification of social reasoning willbe one component of a more generalized social cognitive intervention process. Thiswould be an effective period for social cognitive intervention because response scriptsand the use of a variety of cognitive processes by young children are less entrenched,self-image has not deteriorated to the extent that it often has for older children, fam-ily interaction patterns are more flexible, and peer rejection is not such a major issue(e.g., Cummings et al., 1989; Dodge & Crick, 1990; Loeber, 1991; Mize & Ladd, 1990).

CONCLUSION

It is clear that the research work focusing on the cognitive capacities of aggressive chil-dren is not yet complete. Current research demonstrates that aggressive childrenshow deficits and biases in their social information processing that impact on the en-coding and interpretation of cues and response decisions. We also understand thatcognitions based on early experience and social schemas play a part in the develop-ment and maintenance of aggressive behavior. Social reasoning can be linked to boththese aspects of social cognition, impacting on the cues that are encoded, the inter-pretations that are drawn, the subsequent response decision, and the development ofsocial schema. However, discussion of the impact of social reasoning when links be-tween cognition and aggression are examined has been rare. A great deal is knownabout the development of social reasoning of children and adolescents drawn fromthe normal population, but there has been little empirical research investigatingwhether the social aggressive children may access information from the underlying so-cial reasoning domains differently.

We suggest that there are measurable differences in the social reasoning of aggres-sive children and adolescents when compared to their more prosocial peers. Researchsuggests that aggressive adolescents are more likely to categorize aggressive responsesto complex events as within the personal domain, leading to behavioral decisionsbased on the legitimacy of the aggressive action and a lack of consideration about theimpact of such a response on the welfare of others. In contrast, younger aggressivechildren are less likely to categorize prototypic personal events as within the personaldomain, and are more likely to reflect on moral transgressions with reference to spe-cific rules and authority figures. It is suggested that differences in the social reasoningof aggressive children when compared with their prosocial peers will affect their deci-sion making and subsequent behavior in social situations.

There has been no research to date examining the social reasoning of young aggres-sive children when confronted by complex, mixed domain events. Further investiga-tions into the social reasoning of aggressive adolescents and young children are essen-tial. We need to extend our understanding of the developmental pathways of socialreasoning in aggressive children. This is turn will have implications for the effectivenessof interventions by allowing the refinement of social cognitive treatment approaches.

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