While several recent popular books address the topic of girls' meanness to one another, this volume offers the first balanced, scholarly analysis of scientific knowledge in this area. Integrating current research on emotion regulation, gender, and peer relations, the book examines how girls are socialized to experience and express anger and aggression from infancy through adolescence. Considered are the developmental functions of such behaviors as gossip, friendship manipulation, and social exclusion; consequences for both victims and perpetrators; and approaches to intervention and prevention. Presenting innovative research models and methods, this is an accessible and much-needed synthesis for researchers, professionals, and students.
Social Aggression among Girls: Foreword by Eleanor Maccoby
I. Setting the Stage
1. Girls' Anger and Aggression: The Bind between Feeling Angry and Being Nice
2. Childhood Aggression: Sticks and Stones and Social Exclusion
3. Gender and Peer Relations: Separate Worlds?
II. Development
4. Girls' Anger in Infancy: Early Lessons That Anger Is Unwelcome
5. Girls' Anger and Aggression in Preschool: If You Don't Do What I Say, I Won't Be Your Friend
6. Middle Childhood: Gossip, Gossip, Evil Thing?
7. Adolescence: Girl Talk, Moral Negotiation, and Strategic Interactions to Inflict Social Harm
III. Clinical Implications
8. Developmental and Psychosocial Consequences of Girls' Aggression
9. Prevention and Intervention: Harnessing the Power of Sisterhood
10. New Models for Social Aggression: For Its Own SakeI. Setting the Stage
1. Girls' Anger and Aggression: The Bind between Feeling Angry and Being Nice
2. Childhood Aggression: Sticks and Stones and Social Exclusion
3. Gender and Peer Relations: Separate Worlds?
II. Development
4. Girls' Anger in Infancy: Early Lessons That Anger Is Unwelcome
5. Girls' Anger and Aggression in Preschool: If You Don't Do What I Say, I Won't Be Your Friend
6. Middle Childhood: Gossip, Gossip, Evil Thing?
7. Adolescence: Girl Talk, Moral Negotiation, and Strategic Interactions to Inflict Social Harm
III. Clinical Implications
8. Developmental and Psychosocial Consequences of Girls' Aggression
9. Prevention and Intervention: Harnessing the Power of Sisterhood
10. New Models for Social Aggression: For Its Own Sake