Adolescents' Aggressive and Prosocial Behaviors: Links With Social Information Processing, Negative Emotionality, Moral Affect, and Moral Cognition

This study examined the relationship between adolescents’ prosocial and aggressive behaviors and moral affect and cognition (feelings of guilt, shame and empathy, and perspective taking), negative emotionality, and biases in thinking. Hostile attribution biases (inferring hostile intentions to ambiguous acts), emotionality, and aspects of conscience were related to adolescents’ prosocial and aggressive behavior. However, the pattern was complex and varied depending upon the type of behaviors predicted.