Children's Evaluations of Retaliatory Aggression Against Siblings and Friends

Using vignettes, we examined children's judgments about aggressive retaliation against siblings and friends. We studied the role of relationship as it interacts with the type of retaliation depicted in the story, the age relationship of the story characters, and the intentionality of the initial aggression, as well as the respondent characteristics of gender and aggressiveness. Physical and verbal retaliation generally were considered most wrong when directed at a younger sibling; when the retaliation involved property damage such aggression was considered least wrong. Children, as expected, rated retaliation against an accidental aggressor as more wrong than against an intentional aggressor, regardless of relationship. There were also no overall gender differences in judgments of retaliation against siblings and peers. However, aggressive girls rated retaliation against siblings less severely than less aggressive girls. Judgments of retaliation among boys were unrelated to level of aggression. The findings are discussed in relation to previous literature on sibling conflict and family violence.