Cognitive antecedents of aggression: Social Information Processing and Dimensions of Emotional Awareness

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between overt / relational aggression, the stages of social information processing and dimensions of emotional awareness.
120 girl and 105 boys were randomly selected from elementary schools in Shiraz city. The Overt/ Relational Aggression of Shahym (1385), the Social Stories of Brian and Turkaspa (1994) and the Emotional Awareness of Rieffe et al, (2008) were used as instruments in this research. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficient, and multiple regressions.
The findings of the study revealed significant correlation between two types of aggression and the stage of goals clarification in the social information processing. Also, there were significant correlations between types of aggression and different dimensions of emotions including: differentiating emotion, attending to others emotion, not hiding emotion and analyses of emotions. Data analyses showed that social information processing only in third steps can predict both types of aggression. Also, overt aggression was predicted by the dimensions of differentiating emotion and analyses of emotions. The results revealed that, dimensions of attending to others emotions and analyses of emotions were predicted by relational aggression.
The finding of this study revealed that there is a significant relationship between goals clarification and aggression behavior; dimension of emotional awareness could predict aggression. According to these results it can be noted to key roles of emotional awareness and social information processing in reducing aggression.