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Aggression and Adaptation

The Bright Side to Bad Behavior

• Edited by Patricia H. Hawley, Todd D. Little, Philip C. Rodkin

• Price: $37.50 $33.75
• Binding: Paperback (also available in Hardback)
• Pages: 312
• Published by: Psychology Press
• Publication Date: 22nd February 2007
• ISBN: 978-0-8058-6234-8

About the Book

Aggression and Adaptation raises thought provoking questions about interpersonal functioning within social groups. The reader may find him/herself entertaining thoughts about the nature of goodness as the chapters suggest that aggressive behavior can offer significant avenues for personal growth, goal attainment, and bolstering one's social standing. The volume brings to light alternative points of view to the prevailing orthodoxy that aggression equals pathology. Interdisciplinary in nature, the book features evolutionary, school, feminist, historical, and methodological perspectives.

Adaptation is addressed at multiple levels, the first of which is ultimate causation. Four chapters cover the aggression-adaptation link from various evolutionary perspectives. Succeeding chapters focus on: adaptation as psychological adjustment; aggression in the peer system and the contexts in which these systems occur; and the self-other dialectic in societal context, highlighting that aggressive children are often well-embedded in the social network.

Intended for researchers in developmental, evolutionary, social, personality, and educational psychology, as well as developmental psychopathologists, this book is also suitable for advanced courses on social-personality development, the psychology of violence, aggression, peer relationships, and human motivation.

Reviews

"...timely, cutting edge, and a badly needed corrective to an extremely important field."
—David M. Buss, Ph.D.
University of Texas at Austin

"I would require this book for all of my doctoral students who study aggression... It is a wonderful compilation of leading peer relations and aggression experts."
—Dorothy L. Espelage, Ph.D.
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Table of Contents

Hawley, Preface. Hawley, Social Dominance in Childhood and Adolescence: Why Social Competence and Aggression May Go Hand in Hand. Vaughn, Santos, An Evolutionary/Ecological Account of Aggressive Behavior and Trait Aggression in Human Children and Adolescents. Smith, Why Has Aggression Been Thought of as Maladaptive? Pellegrini, Is Aggression Adaptative? Yes: Some Kinds Are and in Some Ways. Card, Little, Differential Relations of Instrumental and Reactive Aggression With Maladjustment: Does Adaptivity Depend on Function? Cillessen, Mayeux, Variations in the Association Between Aggression and Social Status: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives. Sippola, Paget, Buchanan, Praising Cordelia: Social Aggression and Social Dominance Among Adolescent Girls. Bukowski, Abecassis, Self, Other, and Aggression: The Never-ending Search for the Roots of Adaptation. Farmer, Xie, Cairns, Hutchins, Social Synchrony, Peer Networks, and Aggression in School. Rodkin, Wilson, Aggression and Adaptation: Psychological Record, Educational Promise.