Children's cognitive representations of parent-child interaction as determinants of victimization and aggression in the peer group

Victimized children display debilitating thoughts, feelings and behaviors that may originate in family interactions and generalize to the peer group, causing children to be victimized by aggressive peers. This study tested the hypothesis that children's mental representations of their family experiences cause them to have reactions during peer interactions that lead to their victimization by peers. It was suggested that a perception of the self as helpless and a perception of the parent as controlling or threatening causes children to exhibit debilitated behavior among peers that contributes to their victimization. Also, certain perceptions of self and parent may contribute to aggression toward peers. Results for boys were in accord with hypotheses, in that both victimization and aggression were predicted by interactions of perceptions-of-self with perceptions-of-parent. Results for girls were less predictable from the formulation.