Abstract
This study examined the social reasoning of preadolescent relationally aggressive girls, nonaggressive girls, overtly aggressive boys, nonaggressive boys and comorbid relationally/ overtly aggressive boys in the context of hypothetical relational and instrumental conflict dilemmas. Social reasoning skills were assessed with the Interpersonal Negotiation Strategies Interview (Schultz, Selman, & Yeates, 1989) and participants' social goals and self-efficacy perceptions were also examined. In general, participants demonstrated better social reasoning when confronted with the instrumental conflict scenario than the relational dilemma. Girls exhibited higher levels of social reasoning than boys across both dilemmas. Between-groups comparisons of social reasoning skills at specific problem solving steps yielded more complex results. When generating possible solutions to the relational dilemma, relationally aggressive girls gave the protagonist's needs greater priority than did the nonaggressive girls. Overtly aggressive boys prioritized the protagonist's needs over the antagonist's needs to a greater extent than nonaggressive boys for both the instrumental and relational dilemmas. An examination of participants' goal and self-efficacy ratings revealed mixed findings. However, all participants strongly endorsed the prosocial goals of working out the problem peacefully and saving the friendship, and reported high levels of confidence in their own abilities to accomplish these goals. Implications and limitations of this study and future directions are discussed.
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