Child Psychiatry Hum Dev (2007) 37:205–220

DOI 10.1007/s10578-006-0030-9

Individual Differences in Responses to Provocation

and Frequent Victimization by Peers

Kelly M. Champion Æ Daniel L. Clay

Published online: 14 November 2006

Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2006

Abstract This study examined associations between victimization by peers and

intention to respond to provocative events as a function of anger arousal and
motivation to improve the situation in a cross-sectional sample of school-age chil-
dren (N = 506, 260 males, 246 females). Results demonstrated that more intense
anger and more retaliatory motivation were positively associated with intentions to
aggress and with frequency of victimization. The association between aggressive
intentions to respond to anger provocation and victimization could be accounted for
by subjective feelings of anger and motivation to retaliate. The contribution of
emotion processes was stronger for boys than for girls. A post hoc examination
of non-bullying participants revealed that motivation accounted for aggressive
intentions among the non-bullies. Results support including anger management
programs in prevention efforts that target the school climate and victims’ risk for
psychopathology.

Keywords Victimization by peers Æ Emotion Æ Anger Æ Motivation Æ

Aggression Æ Gender

Introduction

Bullying occurs when one or more individuals repeatedly use intentional overt
physical aggression, teasing, covert aggression, and/or social exclusion to harm
weaker victims and display dominance [1–3]. Victims often suffer devastating social

K. M. Champion (&)
Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Child Development and Family Studies
Research Center, Arizona State University at the West Campus, PO Box 37100, Phoenix,
AZ 85308-7100, USA
e-mail: kelly.champion@asu.edu

D. L. Clay
College of Education and Human Services, Western Illinois University, Horrabin Hall 117,
Macomb, IL 61455, USA
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and emotional maladjustment relative to uninvolved peers [1, 4–7], which is not
surprising given the formidable challenge that victims confront to manage their
emotions as well as the strong relation between emotion processes and psychopa-
thology [8]. Emotion processes, however, are relatively understudied in school-age
victims. There has been limited attention to anger with much of the work on emotion
and victimization emphasizing general emotion processes, very young populations of
children, or aggression. To address the need for a better understanding of specific
emotions, the current study examines individual differences in victimization, anger,
anger-related motivation in response to provocative scenarios and among school-age
children.

Emotion Regulation

Emotion regulation has been studied from many different perspectives but the
perspective taken here is a functional approach [9–11] and draws from the Differ-
ential Emotion Theory [12, 13]. Functional theories assert that emotion is initiated
and managed by processes in internal and external environments including biological
(e.g., temperament), experiential, affective, and cognitive events. Thus, emotions
alter and are altered by the self and by interpersonal events [12, 14–16]. The func-
tional approach assumes that emotions are adaptive products of evolution that
organize and motivate behavior via ‘‘processes of establishing, maintaining, or dis-
rupting, relations between the person and the internal or external environment,
when such relations are significant to the individual’’ [10, p. 395]. Emotions also are
presumed to be highly responsive to both internal and external events, to play a
fundamental role in the emergence of individual differences, and to not be subsumed
under other developmental systems such as cognition [12, 15–17].
According to functional perspectives on emotion, the experience of different
emotions (subjective feelings and conscious motivation) provides feedback about
goals and interactively organizes and motivates behaviors that minimize or maximize
emotion experiences. For example, one person’s failure to recognize real threats
when feeling excited might increase reckless behavior that maintains and increases
feelings of excitement—at great risk to physical integrity. Excitement might be
evidenced by engaging in impulsive behavior or by delaying in reckless behavior.
Another individual might delay action to increase anticipatory excitement but ulti-
mately approach the same threat. Thus, there is considerable variability found
among behavioral responses to emotions across contexts that are recognized by the
functional approach and which defy identifying a specific behavior as evidence of a
specific emotion. Failure to regulate emotion is evidenced by a failure to inhibit
overwhelming affect, and/or by the emergence of emotion control processes that
lead to maladaptive behavior (e.g., links between affect and cognition that motivate
or organize socially inappropriate behavior [12, 13].

Anger Management

Anger is a conceptualized to be a basic emotion by Differential Emotions Theory

[12, 13], which means that is a ‘‘hardwired’’ product of evolution with a universal
function. The function of anger is to motivate and organize resistance to frustration
and displays of dominance [14, 16, 17]. Thus, the direct expression of anger serves to
assert dominance and/or remove a frustrating circumstance. Emotion processes also
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function between people to communicate information and to influence others.

Processes of emotion regulation, thus, are posited to balance anger-related behavior
with adaptive interpersonal goals, which are often prosocial. Optimally regulated
anger does not result in signals that escalate exchanges with another nor reinforces
aggressive behavior with a display of distress but effectively removes or reduces
another’s power to block a victim’s goals or deescalate one’s unpleasant feelings
[16, 17]. Failure to regulate anger, however, can disrupt relations between goals and
behavior and result in less adaptive behavior [18].
Studying anger in children, who strive to maintain control, poses a challenge to
researchers. The association between displays of anger and subjective reports is
often weak and results vary across studies. For example, in a study of very young
children, Arsenio and colleagues found that individual differences in displays of
anger in aggressive contexts were not consistently associated with maladjustment
[19]. Kochenderf–Ladd also found that young school-age victims were not angrier
than non-victims but were more likely than non-victims to be motivated to seek
revenge [20]. Among older children associations between subjective feelings and
observable displays are weak to non-existent [21–23], although children with
stronger motivation to maintain positive social interactions are less likely to display
anger or aggression in response to provocation [24–26]. Taken together, the findings
highlight the importance of examining motivation and feelings as indicators of
subjective emotional experience and including a range of contexts in measures of
emotion processes [27].
The weak and indirect associations between of reports of anger across studies also
are consistent with the generative effects of emotion regulation [10]: children’s
ability to inhibit the display of anger with peers might decrease the intensity of anger
that they feel. By broadening the assessment to other provocative contexts to include
settings where a child may have less control over emotional expression. We believe
that self-reports of emotion should be included in the body of knowledge about
anger management because the use of self-report, while not definitive, is important
to the face validity of prevention programs [28, 29]: Also, anger and emotion have
salience with individuals, and efforts to change how a child manages emotion must
be related in some way to their conscious experience and understanding.

Victimization, Emotion, and Provocation

A growing body of work on emotion processes and victimization suggests that fre-
quent victims manage emotion in a less adaptive manner than non-victims; but these
studies have focused on very young children, general emotion regulation or exam-
ined maladjusted—not necessarily victimized youth. Among preschool children,
there is inconsistent evidence that differences in managing anger predict more vic-
timization. In a longitudinal study of preschool children, individual differences in the
intensity and frequency of displays of anger to observers in some situations predicted
more victimization in the future and this relationship was mediated by emotion
regulation and intending an aggressive response [30]. Shields and Cicchetti also
found that differences in general processes of emotion regulation predicted
involvement in bullying as a victim or a perpetrator in a sample of maltreated
school-age children; and dysregulated emotion processes accounted for differences
in symptoms of psychopathology among bullies and victims [31]. Anger, however,
was not specifically examined.
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Victims’ problems managing emotion may increase their risk for externalizing
behaviors that invites aggressive exchanges with others [31]. Studies have shown that
relative to peers, school-aged victims are more likely to have problems controlling
emotion including showing obvious signs of distress, social anxiety, helpless sub-
mission, depression [32–34] and more hostile and aggressive behavior [35–38] Vic-
tims, for example, are more likely than uninvolved peers to display reactive
aggression—a subtype of aggression that is preceded by an insult, confrontation, or
frustration [36, 37]. Consistent with the conceptual definition, reactive aggression has
been shown to be accompanied by higher levels of physiological arousal and by more
explicit and frequent displays of anger than proactive aggression, which is unpro-
voked and for purpose of gaining status or privilege [2, 27, 36, 39].

Gender and Anger Regulation

The research on gender differences in responses to anger is limited, in part, because of

an overwhelming focus on males in the area of aggression and anger. Males frequently
have been found to be more likely to be physically aggressive than females at all ages
[37, 39–41]. Gender differences in displays of anger, however, may not be as robust in
provocative contexts. Analyses of a very large longitudinal set of data showed that on
broad measures of aggression when both reactive and proactive subtypes are included
girls tended to catch up to boys by age 12 [42]. Also, in a recent review, Knight and
colleagues showed that males and females were at equal risk for aggressive responses
in highly emotionally arousing contexts [26]. In contexts with moderate levels of
arousal, however, gender differences are more likely to emerge. In one observational
study of children responding to provocative peers in the lab, girls made fewer negative
comments than boys [23], which suggests that typically provocative events may fall
within the level of emotionally arousing contexts to produce gender differences.

Current Study and Hypotheses

The current paper examined the extent to which two dysregulated emotion processes
(more intense anger arousal and retaliatory motivation) accounted for associations
between victimization and aggression in response to provocative events. The measure
that was used examined intended responses to typical anger-provoking events across a
range of interpersonal contexts (with parent, other adult, friend, peer, and sibling).
Previous work has found that children intend to exert more control over expressions of
anger with peers than with adults [43]. Therefore, in this study, the goal was to assess
conscious anger management processes across a number of events with different
actors to order to capture relatively stable individual differences in anger processes
that were associated with behavioral intentions to respond and victimization.
The data were expected to fit a model in which victims’ reactive aggression was
accounted for by individual differences in emotion processes. Gender differences
were also considered because, although there are robust differences between boys
and girls in the prevalence of aggressive behavior, the differences may diminish in
emotion arousing contexts. In light of this, we tested the potential for gender to
moderate the prerequisite associations. This study does not posit whether victims’
emotion processes are cause or consequence of more victimization but posit that the
associations between victimization and behavior in provocative situations are
partially explained by differences in emotion processes.
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Method

Participants and Procedures

The data presented are part of a larger data set on anger, bullying, and victimization.
Passive consent procedures were employed in this study because the topic was
consistent with a school-wide curriculum goal of violence prevention, and the pro-
cedures were reviewed by a committee evaluating research with human participants.
As an added precaution, the procedures and measures were reviewed by the human
subjects review committee on campus and by school personnel. Parents were notified
by the school that the study would take place and parents were invited to contact the
school to refuse their child’s participation if they wished. Teachers took note of
students for whom consent was refused and directed those students to other activ-
ities. Participating students were informed that they were not required to participate
and they did not have to complete any measures or items that they did not wish to
complete. Except for students excluded by the request of their parent or guardian,
all students in attendance on the days of data collection were invited to participate,
and the questionnaires were administered in the classroom to students on two dif-
ferent days approximately 6 weeks apart. Measures were read aloud to students who
answered on the questionnaires.
On the first day of data collection, classroom teachers administered measures
assessing bullying and victimization during about 10 min of class time (Bully/Victim
Questionnaire [38]). The second day of data collection was approximately 6 weeks
later, and trained undergraduate students and the first author listed administered the
measures in the classrooms to participating students in 20 min (Anger Response
Inventory for Children, ARI-C, [44]).
Five hundred thirty-three students were invited to complete the measures. On
average, at least 98% of each class was in attendance on the days of the measures.
Twenty-two (4%) of these potential participants obscured their identification
number, which prevented matching their responses across the two administrations,
and/or skipped at least one entire page of a measure. Five additional participants
who did not report their gender were also dropped from the analyses. The
remaining 506 participating children (246 female, 260 male, 51%) completed both
measures.
The sample adequately represented all three grades in a Midwestern public school
in a semi-rural community: fourth grade (n = 147), fifth grade (n = 180), and sixth
grade (n = 171). Mean age for the sample was 11 years, 0 months (SD = 1.1 years;
range = 9–13 years; median = 11 years). Unfortunately, the school would not allow
us to gather individual data on the students’ ethnic/cultural background, but census
data [45] for the area that the school served revealed that the county was 97%
Caucasian with a median annual household income of $39,800 [45].

Measures

Peer Victimization

The Victimization Scale was used to assess self-reported overt and relational
aggressive victimization by peers over the previous 4 months. The scale combined
items from the Victimization of Self subscale of the Bully/Victim Questionnaire [38]
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and the Social Experience Questionnaire – Self Report [46, 47]. The Victimization of
Self subscale has been shown in another study to correlate moderately with parent-
reported victimization of the child [35]. Items from the Social Experience Ques-
tionnaire – Self Report were added to the measure to assess a broader range of
relational aggression. Items assessed by the Victimization Scale were as follows: (a)
another kid called me mean names to hurt my feelings; (b) another kid said he/she
was going to beat me up; (c) a kid who was mad at me tried to get back at me by not
letting me be in his or her group; (d) another kid hit or kicked to hurt me; (e)
another kid told lies about me so other kids would not like me; (f) a kid tried to keep
others from liking me by saying mean things; (g) another kid threatened me; and (h)
another kid pushed or shoved me. Participants responded to each item using a 5-
point Likert-type scale (1 = almost never, 2 = once or twice, 3 = sometimes, 4 = once
a week, 5 = more than once per week). Responses were averaged across items and
higher scores indicated a more frequent victimization (range = 1–4.43, M = 1.56,
SD = 0.63). Results from our research indicated good internal consistency across the
eight items (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.87), which was consistent with published findings
on the two measures from which we drew our items [38, 47].

Bullying Scale

This measure was constructed in the same manner as the Victimization Scale. Items
were drawn from the Victimization of Others subscale of the Bully/Victim Ques-
tionnaire [38] and the Social Experience Questionnaire – Self Report [46, 47]. Items
assessed by the Bullying Scale were as follows: (a) I called another kid mean names
to hurt that kid’s feelings; (b) I told another kid I was going to beat him or her up;
(c) I tried to get back at another kid by not letting that kid be in our group; (d) I hit
or kicked another kid to hurt that kid; (e) I told lies about a kid so the other kids
would not like that kid; (f) I tried to keep others from a kid by saying mean things;
(g) I threatened another kid; and (h) I pushed or shoved another kid. Participants
responded to each item using a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = almost never, 2 = once
or twice, 3 = sometimes, 4 = once a week, 5 = more than once per week). Responses
were averaged across items, and higher scores indicated more frequent victimization
(range = 1–4.43, M = 1.56, SD = 0.63). Results from our research indicated
good internal consistency across eight items (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.87), which is
consistent with published findings on the two measures from which we drew our
items [38, 47].

Characteristic Responses to Anger

The Anger Response Inventory for Children (ARI-C) [44] assesses participants’
responses to typical events that provoke anger. The ARI-C assesses self-reported
characteristic responses to everyday anger as presented in 20 written scenarios. The
Child version used here is one of three versions (Child, ages 8–14; Adolescent, ages
12–18; and Adult, post-high school) that assess characteristic responses in parallel
formats across the life span. On this measure, participating children responded to
written and illustrated descriptions of 20 scenarios representing a range of anger
provoking contexts including anger at a peer, parent, sibling, teacher, or friend (e.g.,
you find out a ‘‘friend’’ was talking about you behind your back or your parents
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accuse you of doing something that you did not do) by imagining themselves in that
situation and indicating how they would respond if the situation happened to them.
For each provocative scenario, several characteristic emotional responses relevant to
the experience of anger are assessed including Anger Arousal (‘‘If this happened to
you, how angry would you be?’’); Motivation to Retaliate (‘‘How much would you
want to get back at the person?’’); and Motivation to Improve (‘‘How much would
you like to make the situation better?’’). In addition, children are asked to respond
to a range of cognitive and behavioral response intentions and to anticipate expected
con-scale consequences, given their intended responses. Responses to the emotional
experience subscales (Anger intensity and motivational subscales) are based on 5-
point Likert-type scales (e.g., 1 = not all, 2 = a little, 3 = somewhat, 4 = very angry,
5 = very, very angry; or 1 = not at all, 2 = a little, 3 = somewhat, 4 = pretty much,
5 = a lot). Responses to the behavioral intentions subscales are based on the fol-
lowing 5-point scale: 1 = not at all likely, 2 = unlikely, 3 = maybe, 4 = likely,
5 = very likely. The items for each subscale are unique to that subscale.
The current study included two aspects of motivation: Motivation to Retaliate
and Motivation to Improve, r(506) = 0.84. Thus, responses to Motivation to Retal-
iate items were reversed and summed with responses to Motivation to items for each
scenario to generate a more reliable and stable index of Positive Motivation in the
face of provocation. Scores on these combined items were averaged to create a single
subscale score with a possible range from 2 to 10. Higher scores on this variable
indicate more motivation to improve and less motivation to retaliate.
In addition, items drawn from the ARI-C were used to create a composite sub-
scale of reactive aggression by averaging the items on 3 of 18 subscales that measure
behavioral intentions to aggress. Thus, we averaged 19 items that made up the
following subscales: Physical Aggression (seven items; e.g., hit the person, kick the
person), Verbal Aggression (six items; e.g., shout at the person), and Talk Badly (a
6-item scale that measures aggression directed at the target’s status; e.g., say mean
things about the person behind [his or her] back, tell others not to like the person),
which generated a scale with a possible range from 1 to 5. Correlations between
scores on these subscales ranged from 0.68 to 0.54 (N = 506). See Table 1.
Cronbach’s alphas were reported for each of the ARI-C subscales used in our
study (Anger Arousal, Positive Motivation, Physical Aggression, Verbal Aggression,
and Talk Badly). In the original study of the measure by Tangney and colleagues,
results revealed alphas that ranged from 0.69 to 0.82 [44]. Similarly, in our study, the
inter-item reliability scores were Anger Arousal, a = 0.93; Positive Motivation,
a = 0.96; Physical Aggression, a = 0.81; Verbal Aggression, a = 0.78; and Talk
Badly, a = 0.68. The alpha for the combined items on the Reactive Aggression
subscale was 0.88.
These priori-defined subscales were designed by the authors of the ARI to pro-
vide a close examination of cognitive and behavioral responses to provocative
events. Confirmatory empirical research with this measure is limited. However,
relationships between intended behavioral and cognitive responses to anger on this
measure and teacher-reported adjustment in children have been shown to be sta-
tistically significant and in the expected direction, indicating that these constructs
have meaningful relations with actual behavior [44]. In the original article on the
ARI, Tangney and colleagues also reported test–retest alphas ranging from 0.60 to
0.79 among 143 college students on the ARI-A [44]. Tangney’s results [44] reveal
that the inter-item reliability estimate for each a priori subscale was very similar
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across children, adolescents, and adults and that differences in reliability tended to
reflect more stability for children than for older populations. (For more information
regarding reliability, please see Tangney, Bornstein, and Barlow [41].)
The ARI is inappropriate for traditional exploratory factor analysis due to the
distribution of items across a range of different types of scenarios involving different
actors in the target role (e.g., mother, sibling, friend, peer; Tangney et al., 1996).
Confirmatory factor analysis of the data in this study was conducted, however, to
examine the extent to which items reflected a priori scales. When the factors were
restricted to three and allowed to correlate, results revealed that items loaded on
distinct subscales of Anger Intensity, Motivation to Improve, and behavioral
intention to aggress. Results from these confirmatory factor analyses are available
from the corresponding author.

Results

Preliminary Analyses

A visual inspection of the data indicated that across 506 participants there were 52
missing responses randomly distributed across different subscales. Averages of
completed items on subscales with less than one missing item on the same scale were
substituted on the effected scales. According to descriptive statistics and visual
examinations of the frequency distributions of the variables, Victimization was sig-
nificantly negatively skewed. To adjust for the severe skew, scores on the Victim-
ization subscale were transformed using the base-10 logarithm for the subsequent
analyses [48]. Table 1 presents the means, standard deviations, and correlations
among the variables.

Analyses Plan

First, two models were tested in which Reactive Aggression was predicted from
gender, anger, emotion processes, and victimization. In the first model, Positive
Motivation was posited to mediate the relation between victimization and intentions
to aggress in response to provocation. In the second model, Anger Arousal was

Table 1 Zero-order Pearson correlations among the study’s variables (N = 506)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1. Gender –0.030 –0.022 –0.174** –0.015 –0.179** –0.235**

2. Age 0.000 0.105* –0.020 0.139** 0.051
3. Anger –0.528** 0.138** 0.169** 0.560**
4. Motivation 0.194** 0.306** –0.656**
5. Victimization 0.462** 0.168**
6. Bullying –0.333**
7. Reactive Aggression
M 11 yrs 3.25 6.54 1.56 1.25 1.96
SD 1 yr .732 1.383 0.630 0.686 0.623

* P < 0.02
** P < 0.002
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posited to mediate the association between frequency of victimization and intention

to aggress in response to provocation. Additional regression procedures were con-
ducted to explore the potential for gender to moderate the effects of Victimization
and emotion processes on aggression. To do this, centered and standardized vari-
ables were multiplied together to create 3 two-way interaction terms: gender and
Victimization, gender and Anger Arousal, and gender and Motivation. These terms
were used to test the potential for gender to modify the contribution of predictor
variable (Victimization) and each of the mediating variables (Anger Arousal and
Motivation) on the outcome (Reactive Aggression). Following the guidelines pro-
vided by Aiken and West [48], the interaction terms were entered in a final step.

Potential Mediating Effects of Emotion Processes

To test for mediation effects [49] requires that there be evidence of significant
associations between all of the following relations: (a) the predictor variable (Vic-
timization) and proposed mediating variable (Anger Arousal, Motivation); (b) the
outcome variable (Reactive Aggression) and the proposed mediating variables; and
(c) the predictor variable and the outcome variable to test potential mediation
effects of a variable. Pearson Product Moment correlation procedures were used to
demonstrate that the prerequisite conditions had been met. Table 1 presents the
variables and their correlations. All of the variables were significantly correlated and
thus supported preceding with the mediation analyses. (See Table 1.)
Hierarchical regression procedures were conducted to estimate the contribution
of Victimization to aggressive intentions after controlling for the effects of gender.
Results indicated a significant positive relation between the frequency of self-re-
ported victimization and intentions to aggress in response to provocation. In the first
model, Anger Arousal was entered into the equation at the second step. Results
revealed that the contribution of Victimization fell while Anger remained significant.
The indirect pathway from Victimization to Anger to Reactive Aggression was
examined by using an online calculator [50] to estimate Sobel’s z. Results confirmed
a significant indirect effect of anger on victims’ risk for aggressive responses:
z = 3.79, P < 0.001. Thus, the data were consistent with a model in which subjec-
tively experienced anger across a range of provocative contexts accounted for a
significant portion of the variance in victims’ risk for intentions to respond to
provocation with aggression. (See Table 2.)
The second model tested the potential mediating effects of motivation on the
relation between Victimization and Reactive Aggression. Step 1 of this model was
identical to the model examining Anger, except that in step 2 of the second model,
Positive Motivation was added to the model. At step 2, the contribution of Victim-
ization fell below significance, while Motivation predicted a significant portion of the
variance. A test of the indirect path from victimization to aggressive intentions via
motivation indicated that the change was significant: Sobel’s z = 3.85, P < 0.0001.
Again, the data were consistent with the posited model in which maladaptive
motivation accounted for a significant portion of the variance in the positive relation
between frequency of victimization and intention to respond to provocation with
aggression across a range of typically provocative events [51, 52]. The findings
provide support for the proposition that consciously experienced emotion processes
make a significant contribution to victims’ risk for intentions to respond with
aggression. (See Table 3.)
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Table 2 Summary of the hierarchical regression analysis examining the effects of gender, frequent
victimization, and anger arousal on reactive aggression

Variable DR2 B SE B b CI P

Step 1 0.090 <0.001

Gender –0.316 0.055 –0.245 –0.43 –0.21 <0.001
Age 0.002 0.002 0.036 –0.00 0.01 <ns
Victimization 0.304 0.078 0.165 0.15 0.46 <0.001
Step 2 0.273 <0.001
Gender –0.301 0.046 –0.234 –0.392 –0.211 <0.001
Age 0.002 0.002 0.038 –0.00 0.01 ns
Victimization 0.175 0.066 0.095 0.045 0.306 <0.008
Anger intensity 0.340 0.023 0.527 0.295 0.386 <0.001
Step 3 0.006 Ns
Gender –0.239 0.068 –0.185 –0.372 –0.105 <0.001
Age 0.002 0.002 0.032 –0.002 –0.005 <ns
Victimization 0.256 0.091 0.139 0.078 0.306 <0.027
Anger intensity 0.378 0.032 0.586 0.315 0.441 <0.001
Gender · Victimization –0.078 0.047 –0.084 –0.170 0.014 ns
Gender · Anger –0.167 0.132 –0.079 –0.427 0.093 ns

R2 = 0.369, P < 0.001

Potential Moderating Effects of Gender on the Relations Between Victimization,

Emotion Processes, and Aggressive Intentions

To test the potential for gender to moderate the effects of anger arousal or moti-
vation additional steps were entered into the each equation. In each last step,
Reactive Aggression was regressed simultaneously on two interaction terms (gender
and Victimization and gender and the emotion variable (Anger, Positive Motivation).
The results indicated that the interaction effects did not make a significant contri-
bution. See Tables 2 and 3.

Table 3 Summary of the hierarchical regression analysis examining the effects of gender, frequent
victimization, and positive motivation on reactive aggression

Variable DR2 B SE B b CI P

Step 1 0.090 <0.001

Gender –0.316 0.055 –0.245 –0.424 –0.208 <0.001
Age 0.002 0.002 0.038 –0.002 0.006 ns
Victimization 0.304 0.078 0.165 0.150 0.458 <0.001
Step 2 0.324 <0.001
Gender –0.187 0.045 –0.145 –0.275 0.099 <0.001
Age –0.001 0.002 –0.023 0.004 0.002 ns
Victimization 0.101 0.064 0.055 –0.025 0.227 ns
Motivation –0.276 0.017 –0.592 –0.309 –0.244 <0.001
Step 3 0.006 ns
Gender –0.137 0.066 –0.106 –0.267 0.007 <0.001
Age –0.001 0.002 –0.023 –0.004 0.002 ns
Victimization 0.168 0.088 0.091 –0.004 0.340 ns
Motivation –0.302 0.022 –0.648 –0.346 –0.259 <0.001
Gender · Victimization –0.039 0.128 –0.065 –0.388 0.115 ns
Gender · Motivation 0.079 0.046 0.082 –0.011 0.170 ns

R2 = 0.420, P < 0.001

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Post hoc Analyses

Potentially, the associations between Victimization, Anger, Motivation, and aggres-

sive behavior were due to the effects of bully-victims and did not reflect relations
across all victims. To examine this possibility, post hoc regression procedures were
conducted with a subsample of participants whose scores on Bullying Others were
below one-and-a-half [1½ or 1.5] standard deviations above the mean (n = 441, 50%
male). This procedure is likely to have eliminated most of the participants who could
be classified as bullies; because in a study comparing methods of identifying bullies,
Pellegrini and Bartini found that regardless of source (peer or self-report), extreme
scores identified the same bullies and victims [36]. In this subsample of non-bullying
participants, anger arousal was not significantly related to victimization (r = .083, ns)
and thus did not meet the prerequisites for a mediation model. Potentially, bully-
victims are at greater risk for being overwhelmed with angry feelings, whereas
victims’ risks are different. Positive motivation, in contrast, was moderately related
to Victimization, r = 0.176, P < 0.001, and strongly related to Reactive Aggression,
r = 0.652, P < .001, indicating support for testing motivation as a potential mediator
of the association between Victimization and aggressive intentions [51]. An exami-
nation of the indirect pathway from motivation to aggression supported the
proposed mediation model with this non-bullying subsample (Sobel’s z = 3.648,
P < 0.001).

Discussion

This study found that more frequently victimized children respond to provocative
scenarios across a range of interpersonal contexts with more intense feelings of
anger, more motivation to retaliate and less motivation to improve, and more fre-
quent intentions to aggress. Moreover, differences in anger intensity and motivation
accounted for the relation between victimization and intention to aggress, and the
data fit a model in which indirect pathways through emotion processes accounted for
victims’ risk for aggression in provocative situations. The frequency of victimization,
however, did not modify the way in which subjective anger and motivation in pro-
vocative situations were associated with aggressive behavioral intentions. Thus,
regardless of their status on victimization, angrier children with more retaliatory
motivation were more likely to intend an aggressive response. In addition, the data
are consistent with the proposition that differences in the regulation of anger are
associated with more frequent victimization that is not accounted for by more
extreme scores in bully-victims. The findings we have presented are important
because they show that individual differences in feelings of anger, which are
accessible to children, are associated with victimization and maladaptive responses
in emotion eliciting contexts.
Observational research has found that individual differences in the subjective
experience of anger are not strongly associated with displays of emotion when one
peer is provoking another [22, 23]. The discrepancy with our findings, however,
might be attributed to a restricted range in feelings of anger assessed in the labo-
ratory studies. One of the goals of the current study was to examine the potential for
conscious emotion processes to account for the association between victimization by

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peers and aggressive responses to provocation. Children typically aim for and are
successful at controlling their anger displays with peers [23, 43, 55]. In the laboratory
setting there might be a much lower level of arousal experienced due to children’s
conscious efforts to cope with being observed. When anger arousal was assessed
across a number of typical events and participants did not experience a demand to
control anger, findings revealed that emotion processes accounted for a small but
significant portion of the variance in intentions to retaliate with aggression.
It is also possible, however, that the data reflect a tendency for victims to report
having more frequent aggressive fantasies but not actual displays of aggression or
anger [52]. Although the participants were directed to report how they ‘‘would really
act,’’ participants may have responded to the anger measure in a cognitively
coherent manner that is not representative of their observable behavior during a
provocative event. Nonetheless, such an interpretation is not necessarily inconsistent
with the conclusion that victims are at risk for maladaptive emotion processes that
contribute to less adaptive responses to provocative events. Even if victims only
fantasize about an aggressive response that they cannot enact, they feel angrier and
want more revenge. These responses are atypical, and feelings of intense anger and
motivation to retaliate are likely to fuel further anger and predict more aggressive
and less socially competent behavior [18, 24].
It also is possible that victims rarely enact an aggressive strategy against anyone
but live in such a state of angry agitation due to their failure to successfully manage
anger that they are at greater risk for losing control over their emotions. Consistent
with this proposition, previous work has shown that victims are more likely to dis-
play distress that functions to reinforce aggressors [50]. Feelings are fundamental
processes that can influence behavior and individual differences and therefore
should not be entirely discounted [29]. Helping victims to manage anger only makes
sense to the extent that there are differences in anger experiences. If individual
differences in the experience of anger are seen has irrelevant, then prevention
programs that target anger management might lack face validity.
The findings presented here replicate a previously conducted large study of
school-age children using peer and teacher reports that found that victims scored
higher on reactive aggression than non-bullying, non-victimized children [39]. Thus,
in the context of other literature, the data indicate that victims are at risk for less
adaptive responses to provocative interpersonal situations. It must be acknowledged,
however, that these data do not speak to all emotion processes. Victims may fail to
regulate other emotions that interfere with their ability to respond adaptively to the
threat and fear of an attack by another. Consistent with this suggestion, observa-
tional research finds that victims display more interest and joy when confronted by a
bully. Interest would increase the likelihood that a victim would stay in proximity of
their aggressor. The results also do not speak directly to victims’ intended responses
to bullies. If victims do behave aggressively in provocative contexts, they might
target weaker individuals or use more covert aggression that is not as easily observed
or behave aggressively in contexts that are less likely to permit escalation into a
physical fight, e.g., the classroomv [53].

Gender, Anger, Motivation, and Aggression in Response to Provocative Events

In this sample of school-age children, gender differences were robust. Boys,

regardless of the emotion variables, endorse aggressive responses more frequently
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than girls. The emotion variables, however, predicted individual differences above
and beyond the gender differences in intentions to retaliate.
The effects for gender in this study are in keeping with Knight’s proposition that in
moderately arousing situations, girls experience less intense emotional arousal and/or
have better control over emotion [26]. This proved true to the extent that girls reported
more motivation to improve the situation, and were less likely to intend to retaliate to
typically provocative events. It was not true to the extent that there were no gender
differences in reported feelings of subjective anger. This speaks to the importance of
assessing motivations associated with subjective feeling to fully assess affect.

Limitations, Future Research, and Implications

This data set is both enhanced and limited by relying on self-reported phenomenon.
It is important that studies of emotion, motivation, and intentions have some asso-
ciation with self-reported experience in order to have external validity beyond the
laboratory. Self-observed experiences, changes, and motivations are significant
phenomenon in emotion and the authority of an individual to report an emotional
experience is something that should not be diminished or excluded from the liter-
ature. Self-perceptions of anger and the motivational experiences also are likely to
be integral to interventions that aim to improve a child’s ability to manage emotions
and respond to emotion arousing events more effectively.
Nonetheless, using only self-report data prohibits distilling the extent to which
shared method variance accounted for the associations in our data and confirming
the extent to which participants’ actual responses were consistent with their
intentions. Evidence suggests that there are important biases. For example,
observational studies find that victims display anger and contempt when
confronted by a bully as well as joy and nonchalance [54]. Likewise, Salmivalli and
colleagues found that adolescent victims tended to view themselves as acting with
more nonchalant than their peers perceived them display [39]. The data also were
limited by the homogeneous sample and low frequency of aggressive behavior. The
low incidence of bullying and victimization reported by this sample may limit the
generalizability of the findings to more aggressive settings, although these scores
do tend to have skewed distributions across studies with typical children reporting
little or no victimization. It is essential that a more diverse population be examined
in order to speak to the needs of a wider population of students. Additional
information about other responses to provocation such as passive and escapist
behaviors in provocative circumstances need to be explored. Finally, longitudinal
reports are needed to sort out the extent to which different factors precede
victimization, which follow it, and which contribute to a student’s vulnerability
concurrently only.

Summary

We posited that subjective emotion processes act as explanatory processes for the
increased risk among victims of bullies to intend aggressive responses to typically
provocative events with peers, parents, teachers, and siblings. Overall, the data
suggest that victims are at greater risk for failures in emotion regulation than their
peers when emotion regulation is conceptualized as the coordination of emotional,
cognitive, and behavioral phenomenon into adaptive responses to problems in the
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world [10, 12]. The findings add to research [36, 37] by other authors demonstrating
an association between victimization and reactive aggression by showing that the
victims’ intentions to respond with aggression in the face of provocation was
accounted for by emotion processes. The data lend support to interventions that
target anger management with victims by revealing important relations between
subjective anger-related feelings and motivation and behavioral intentions to
aggress.

Acknowledgment I am grateful to the many students who assisted in this project especially Melissa
Buttes.

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