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Youth’s Responses to Peer Provocation: Links to Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression

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Abstract

Youth experiencing anxiety and depression are more likely to be targeted aggressively by peers, making it critical that we understand how they respond to these challenging interpersonal situations. We addressed this issue by recruiting a school-based sample of lower-income youth (N = 327) in grades 6, 7, and 8 (M age =13.10, SD =0.99) to complete a multiple-choice measure asking them to select responses to 11 scenarios describing physical, relational, and verbal provocation by a peer. We found that increasing anxiety was negatively associated with endorsement of aggressive behaviors, whereas greater levels of depressive symptoms were linked to higher rates of aggressive responding, and, for girls, decreased endorsement of assertive strategies. Implications for understanding and intervening on social competence and psychopathology are discussed.

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Conflict of Interest

Melanie A. Dirks declares that there is no conflict of interest; Teresa A. Treat declares that there is no conflict of interest; V. Robin Weersing declares that there is no conflict of interest.

Experiment Participants

All procedures were approved by the local Institutional Review Board. All parents provided informed consent and all children provided assent before taking part in the study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Stewart Biological Sciences, McGill University, W7/3J, 1205 Dr. Penfield Avenue, Montreal, Quebec, H3A1B1, Canada

    Melanie A. Dirks

  2. University of Iowa, Iowa, IA, USA

    Teresa A. Treat

  3. San Diego State University/University of California at San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA

    V. Robin Weersing

Authors
  1. Melanie A. Dirks
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  2. Teresa A. Treat
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  3. V. Robin Weersing
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Correspondence to Melanie A. Dirks.

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Table 3 Zero-order correlations among all measured variables
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Dirks, M.A., Treat, T.A. & Weersing, V.R. Youth’s Responses to Peer Provocation: Links to Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression. J Psychopathol Behav Assess 36, 339–349 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-014-9406-5

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