This post and accompanying video explain Social Information Processing Theory and especially how it can explain aggressive behavior among children.
Social Information Processing Theory and Aggression
Social Information processing theory is a communication theory that can explain why children behave aggressively. It was developed by Kenneth Dodge and Nicki Crick and tries to understand how children start to display aggression towards other people. In other words, children find themselves in a particular situation with other people and there is some kind of problem. Now they have to decide how to act. How do they do that? According to Social Information Processing Theory, the process that children go through involves five steps. So, children go through five step in which they obtain and process information that eventually leads to a decision on how they will behave in a given situation. Below are those five steps.
The Five Steps in which Children Process Information
- Encoding: The first step is called “encoding”, which means that people are trying to read a situation. They try to get a sense of what is going on, such as what another person is doing, and what the other person’s intention is. Say, for example, that a child is standing in the playground and is approached by another child. Then the first child is trying to read the situation and what is happening.
- Making attributions: In the second step, the child starts to interpret the situation and the behavior of the other person. What does this situation mean, and what is it that causes another person to behave the way he or she is behaving? Is the other person trying to provoke you, or is he or she perhaps trying to do something else? For example, are they bullying you, or are they actually simply asking you something?
- Generating potential responses: As a next step, the child is searching for how to respond to the situation. To do that, he or she searches through his or her memory. What are the responses that could be used in this situation? This is where children can go back to behavior that they have learned, like aggression. What type of response could be a solution to the problem that the child is being faced with right now?
- Decision making. Now that there is a potential solution to the problem, the child decides whether or not this solution is the best, or whether another response might be better. For example, would aggression be the best solution, or perhaps something else?
- Enactment. In the final step, the child does what he or she has selected as the best way to act in the situation.
So, children have to process information at each of these steps. They have to read what’s going on in the situation, they have to get information about what they could do in that situation from their memory, and then they have to think about which type of behavior would be best in this situation. Now, these steps can of course be partly automatic. We don’t necessarily think all these steps through consciously, but they can be in part automatic.
The Development of Aggressive Behavior
Now, the idea is that children who display aggressive behavior do not perform this series of steps correctly. This means that in each of these steps, they have deficits. They may, for example, not interpret situations correctly. They may think that another child or person wants to harm them, but maybe that is not the case at all. Or they may think that responding aggressively is the best way to solve the problem, which may not be the case.
In sum, the social information processing approach focuses on how children who show aggressive behavior process information incorrectly and how this may lead them to decide to behave aggressively.
You can find more information on Social Information Processing Theory here:
Dodge, K. A., & Crick, N. R. (1990). Social information-processing bases of aggressive behavior in children. Personality and social psychology bulletin, 16(1), 8-22. LINK
This video is part of my FREE criminal psychology course “Explaining the Criminal Mind in 60 Minutes.” You can get access for free here.