Friendship Quality and Different Forms of Aggressive Behavior in Males and Females in Late Childhood and Adolescence

Children and adolescents with aggressive behavior show deficits in social interactions. Especially in late childhood and adolescence, the influence of peer relationships on development becomes increasingly important. Maintaining and building friendships are developmental tasks, and their success or failure can impact later psychosocial well-being. Not only popularity within the peer group, but also the quality of dyadic friendships is an important factor when considering peer relationships and aggressive behavior. The literature differentiates between positive friendship qualities indicating intimate, close, and supportive friendships, and negative friendship qualities referring to conflict, exclusion, and dominance within a friendship. However, the association between positive and negative friendship qualities and aggressive behavior is heterogeneous as discussed in the literature. Therefore, this review aims to give a systematic overview of the relation between friendship quality and aggressive behavior considering distinct forms (overt vs. relational) and functions (reactive vs. proactive) of aggression. Further, owing to differences in both friendship qualities as well as overt and relational aggression in males and females, possible gender differences in the association between friendship quality and aggression were considered. From a systematic literature search in the electronic databases PsychInfo, Web of Knowledge, and PubMed, 14 articles were selected meeting the search requirements. The results showed different patterns for overt and reactive in contrast to relational and proactive aggression emerging: overt and reactive aggressive adolescents perceive their dyadic friendships as high in negative and low in positive friendship qualities. By contrast, although not consistently found in all articles, children and adolescents with relational and proactive aggression see their friendships as high in both positive and negative friendship qualities. Thus, results suggest that relational aggression may be used to build close friendships. Concurrently, conflict as a negative quality coexists with positive friendship quality and was positively related to the stability of relational aggression. However, it was found to be associated with relational aggression depending on popularity within the peer group. In line with previous literature reports, gender differences emerged with respect to friendship quality and forms of aggression independently, but not in their association with each other. Overall, despite the finding that aggressive children and adolescents do not per se maintain friendships consisting only of negative qualities, conflict seems to be present in all patterns of aggression. The types of assessment of aggression (self vs. peer report) and reciprocity of friendships as well as popularity within the peer group should be considered when interpreting results. Findings are discussed with respect to clinical research and practice.