What triggers aggression among kids?

A four-year longitudinal research led by Duke University says that hyper vigilance to hostility in others triggers aggressive behavior in children, after analyzing 1,299 children and their parents in 12 different cultural groups from nine countries across the globe.

Study's lead author Kenneth A Dodge said that their research indicated that cultures differ in their tendencies to socialize children to become defensive this way, and those differences account for why some cultures have children who act more aggressively than other cultures.

It pointed towards the need to change how kids were socialized in order to make them more benign and more forgiving and less defensive, he added. Participants in the study were from Jinan, China; Medellin, Colombia; Naples, Italy; Rome, Italy; Zarqa, Jordan; the Luo tribe of Kisumu, Kenya; Manilla, the Philippines; Trollhattan/Vanersborg, Sweden; Chiang Mai, Thailand; and Durham, N.C., in the United States (which included African-American, European-American and Hispanic communities). Children were 8 years old at the start of the study.

(The study is published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)