Psychosocial conditioning of aggressive behaviors in early adolescence

The article focuses on conditions of undertaking an active role in interpersonal contacts in early adolescence. The experiment was situated in a context of social learning, which is why a way of functioning in social relationships was treated as an effect of an interaction of biopsychosocial factors. The conditions in which a role of a perpetrator was evoked were looked for in a mutual relation of factors such as: attachment, aggressiveness, psychological defense, and experienced emotions. An experimental group consisted of 399 adolescents aged between 12 and 15 years old. The experiment was longitudinal and two measurements were taken. The first one was taken at the beginning of a school year (September, 2015) and the second one was taken at the end of it (June, 2016). In the experiment, the following scales were used: BPAQ (Buss, Perry, 1992), CD – RISC (Connor, Davidson, 2003), IPPA (Armsden, Greenberg, 1987), SUPSO (Mikšik, 2004) and Mini-DIA (Österman, Björkqvist, 2008). Results obtained suggest an importance of earlier experiences of aggressiveness and experienced emotional states for an activation of aggressive behaviors. Among girls, an important protective factor was psychological defense. Among boys, attachment was crucial. The experiment’s results should make us reflect on an offer of prevention and correction programs for adolescents revealing aggressive behaviors.