JOURNAL OF RESEARCH ON ADOLESCENCE, 16(3), 403428 Copyright r 2006, Society for Research on Adolescence

Trajectories of Prosocial Behavior and Physical Aggression in Middle Childhood: Links to Adolescent School Dropout and Physical Violence
Katja Kokko
skyla University of Jyva

Richard E. Tremblay and Eric Lacourse

University of Montreal

Daniel S. Nagin
Carnegie Mellon University

Frank Vitaro
University of Montreal

Trajectories of prosocial behavior and physical aggression between 6 and 12 years of age were identified for a sample (N 5 1,025) of males. The trajectories were then used to predict school dropout and physical violence at age 17. Using a group-based semi-parametric method, two trajectories of prosociality (low and moderate declining) and three trajectories of physical aggression (low, moderate, and high declining) were obtained. Only a small minority (3.4%) of the boys were characterized by both high aggression and moderate prosociality. Physical aggression predicted both school dropout and physical violence, but contrary to expectations, prosocial behavior did not have additive or protective effects.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Katja Kokko, Department of Psychology, PO Box 35, 40014 University of Jyva skyla , Finland. E-mail: katja.kokko@psyka.jyu.fi

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Prosocial and antisocial behaviors have been conceived both as opposite ends of a single continuum and as independent characteristics of the individual (e.g., Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998; Eron & Huesmann, 1984; Feshbach & Feshbach, 1986; Graziano & Eisenberg, 1997; Hay, 1994; Pulkkinen, 1984; (1972) Shiner, 1998; Shiner & Caspi, 2003; Tremblay, 1991). When Wispe proposed the term prosocial, she clearly meant to create an antonym to the term antisocial. However, research on antisocial and prosocial behaviors over the past three decades has tended to run parallel courses. Prosocial behavior was studied mainly by social-developmental psychologists, whereas criminologists and developmental psychopathologists focused on antisocial behavior (Krueger, Hicks, & McGue, 2001). There exist some exceptions among psychologists: Block and Martin (1955), Feshbach and Feshbach (1969), and Pulkkinen (Pitka nen, 1969) had already, by the 1960s, included in their descriptive models of individual differences both prosociality and antisocial behavior. Furthermore, there exist some recent cross-sectional (Carlo, Hausmann, Christiansen, & Randall, 2003; Crick & Grotpeter, 1995; Wyatt & Carlo, 2002) and longitudinal studies (e.g., Eisenberg et al., 1998; Hastings, ZahnWaxler, Robinson, Usher, & Bridges, 2000; Howes & Phillipsen, 1998; , & Royer, 1992; Hughes & Dunn, 2000; Tremblay, Vitaro, Gagnon, Piche Zhou et al., 2002) that have focused on the links between externalizing behavior and prosocial behavior. The main focus of the longitudinal studies has been the concurrent and/or predictive relations between externalizing problems and prosociality in early to middle childhood. These studies have generally indicated that the correlations between externalizing and prosocial behaviors are at best modest. Using a more personcentered approach, a cross-sectional study by Hawley (2003) identified a group of adolescents who used both prosocial and coercive strategies, called bistrategics. To the best of our knowledge, no previous studies have examined the links between developmental trajectories of aggression and prosociality during middle childhood. Generally, the development of antisocial behavior has been the object of much more research than has prosociality, probably because of the obvious individual and social costs of this behavior (e.g., Coie & Dodge, 1998; Scott, Knapp, Henderson, & Maughan, 2001; Serbin et al., 1998). A number of investigators have recently stressed the fact that in order to understand the developmental links between prosocial and antisocial behaviors, it is crucial to study them within the same individuals (e.g., Caprara, Barbaranelli, & Pastorelli, 2001; Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998; Fabes, Carlo, Kupanoff, & Laible, 1999; Hay, Castle, Davies, Demetriou, & Stimson, 1999). In addition to the correlative studies and a person-centered study mentioned above, there are two lines of recent research that suggest that

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aggressive and prosocial behaviors are independent individual characteristics, residing in the same individual. First, prosocial behavior has been studied as a protective factor against the possible harmful effects of aggression. For example, prosocial tendencies have been shown to buffer an aggressive child against peer rejection (Bierman, Smoot, & Aumiller, 1993; Nangle & Foster, 1992; Volling, MacKinnon-Lewis, Rabiner, & Baradaran, 1993), criminal behavior (Pulkkinen & Tremblay, 1992), and long-term unemployment (Kokko & Pulkkinen, 2000a). There also exists some evidence that child prosocial behavior might be negatively linked to later criminality, independently of aggression (Ha ma la inen & Pulkkinen, 1995, 1996). Second, distinct correlates and etiologies of prosociality and aggression have been found. Krueger et al. (2001) show in their study of adult twins that altruism, a specific form of prosocial behavior, and antisocial behavior did not correlate with each other, had different personality correlates, and different heritability estimates. Antisocial behavior correlated with negative emotionality and a lack of constraint, whereas prosciality was related to positive emotionality. Furthermore, antisocial behavior was linked to genetic factors and non-shared environments, whereas altruism was associated with shared and non-shared environments (for a review of contradictory findings, see Hay, 1994). These findings are in line with the proposition that prosociality and aggression are independent behavioral strategies, rather than representing opposite ends of the same personality trait (Pulkkinen, 1984). The present study had two main objectives: the first was to investigate the links between the developmental trajectories of prosocial behavior and physical aggression during middle childhood (612 years of age) for males. A group-based semi-parametric method was used for the identification of developmental trajectories of these behaviors (Nagin, 1999). The second was to investigate to what extent these two types of developmental trajectories during middle childhood complement each other when used to predict male problem behavior during adolescence. The study of developmental trajectories has recently been applied to the development of physical aggression from childhood to adolescence.1
1 The same sample as used in this investigation has been previously used for the study of developmental trajectories of aggression in several publications but their focus has been different from the present attempt. The Brame et al. (2001) paper focused on the joint trajectories of physical aggression in childhood and late adolescence, that is, between ages 6 and 13 (note that ages 612 were analyzed here) and between ages 13 and 17. Nagin (1999) and Nagin and Tremblay (1999, 2001a, 2001b) have analyzed the development of physical aggression from age 6 to 15 and have linked its trajectories to the development of other types of externalizing

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These studies have consistently shown, first, that meaningful subgroups of individuals who follow distinctive developmental trajectories can be identified (Brame, Nagin, & Tremblay, 2001; Nagin, 1999; Nagin & Tremblay, 1999, 2001a)a finding that is replicated using several different longitudinal studies conducted in different countries, as shown by Broidy et al. (2003). Using the same sample as in the present study but for a slightly different age range, Brame et al. found that at age 613 years, there were three aggression trajectories: low, medium, and high. Second, these studies consistently show that about 510% of the individuals can be characterized as chronically physically aggressive during middle childhood. This means that their level of aggression at school entry is higher than that among the other children, and that they remain more aggressive than the others throughout their childhood and adolescent years. The results from these analyses also indicate that the frequency of physical aggression generally decreases with age, and that there is no significant subgroup of children with an onset of chronic physical aggression after school entry. As discussed by Tremblay (2003), these results lead to a socialization theory of aggression that suggests that children do not learn to aggress physically, but rather learn alternatives to the physical aggression they use spontaneously in early childhood. From this perspective, children who are on a chronic physical aggression trajectory are children who have not learned to use alternative strategies to achieve their aims. Much less is known about the developmental trajectories of prosocial behavior. Age differences in prosocial behavior have been studied mainly with cross-sectional data. In their review of research on prosocial behavior, Eisenberg and Fabes (1998) concluded that there has been little consensus on whether or not there are age-related changes in the development of prosocial tendencies (p. 744). Their meta-analysis of age differences showed that as children grow older, they usually display more prosocial behavioralthough this link seems to be affected by the specific age comparisons made, the way prosocial behavior is investigated (e.g., whether by self- or other reports or observations, and which type of prosocial behavior is examined), and the type of analysis of the age differences used. One would expect that with increasing cognitive capacities, continued emotional development, and an increasing willingness and ability to empathize with other childrens problems, combined with a

behavior problems (including later physical violence) or to different types of predictor variables. The Broidy et al.s (2003) multisite study also used trajectories of physical aggression based on the 615-year-old Montreal boys. The main interest of the present study was in links between the development of aggression and prosociality and in the possible compensatory or protective effects of prosocial behavior.

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widening social environment, children will likely develop higher levels of prosocial behavior (e.g., Carlo et al., 2003). Furthermore, the theory of moral development by Kohlberg, Levine, and Hewer (1983) postulates that children progress through different (and gradually more complex) stages of moral reasoning as they mature. A few recent studies, based on preschoolers and school-aged children, support the notion of complicated relations between different types of prosocial behavior over time. For example, Hay et al. (1999) showed that, from age 18 months to 3 years, spontaneous sharing behavior decreased whereas sharing by request increased. Furthermore, Jackson and Tisak (2001) found in their cross-sectional study of 712-year-old children that younger children showed more sharing than older children, whereas both cooperating and comforting behaviors had more curvilinear associations over this time period. In helping behavior, there were no differences between the age groups in this cross-sectional study. Eisenberg et al. (1999), on the development of prosociality from age 4 to 5 years into young adulthood, report complex associations over time: early spontaneous sharing behavior was related to young adult prosocial dispositions via sympathy, but early prosociality, not reflecting an other orientation, did not show rank-order continuity into young adult behavior. She and her colleagues argue that generally prosocial dispositions show substantial rank-order continuity from childhood to adulthood (Eisenberg et al., 2002). However, as highlighted by Fabes et al. (1999), still more information is needed about prosocial development, particularly in early adolescence. Especially important would be to study longitudinally the developmental trajectories of prosocial behavior. The rank-order continuity cannot reveal to what extent and at which period in time the frequency of behavior is increasing or decreasing. To our knowledge, only one longitudinal study has attempted to trace te , Tremblay, the developmental trajectories of prosocial behavior. Co Nagin, Zoccolillo, and Vitaro (2002), using a large representative sample of over 1,800 kindergarten children in Canada, reported that, for both boys and girls, prosocial behavior was stable from 6 to 12 years of age. About one half of the participants (54% of the boys and 58% of the girls) had a stable moderate level of prosocial behavior. About 2% of the boys and 27% of the girls followed a stable high trajectory, and about 44% and 15%, respectively, followed a low trajectory of the behavior in question. Sparse data on the developmental trajectories of prosocial behavior, as well as the lack of prosocial and antisocial behavior assessments on the same individuals over several childhood years, have precluded the study of developmental links between prosocial behavior and antisocial

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behavior. From a socialization theory perspective (e.g., Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998; Tremblay, 2003), it is expected that, with age, most children will decrease the frequency of their physical aggressions and increase the frequency of their prosocial behavior. There is good evidence that physical aggression declines with age, and there are theoretical indications, but no clear empirical data, suggesting that prosocial behavior increases. The aim of this study was to investigate the developmental links between physical aggression and prosocial behavior in a large sample of male participants. As discussed above, there are many claims that antisocial and prosocial tendencies may reside in the same individual. Consequently, one would expect to find a group of children with both frequent prosocial behavior and physically aggressive behavior. For preventive and intervention purposes, it is important to identify this subgroup of children, because prosociality may protect them against later maladjustment. We also examined whether the trajectories for physical aggression and prosociality contributed to the prediction of adjustment problems during adolescence. Adjustment problems were measured by physical violence and school dropout at age 17. There exists an extensive body of literature showing that early aggressive behavior is strongly associated with later criminal behavior and deviant peer relations (e.g., Cairns & Cairns, 1994; Coie & Dodge, 1998; Loeber & Hay, 1997; Rutter, Giller, & Hagell, 1998). Nagin and Tremblay (1999) have previously shown that trajectories of physical aggression, based on assessments between ages 6 and 15, are linked to juvenile delinquency, that is, physical violence at age 17. Boys who followed a trajectory of chronic physical aggression were significantly more likely to report episodes of physical violence in adolescence than boys on the other trajectories. In this study, we investigated whether prosocial behavior protected some of these chronically aggressive boys against later violence. It was assumed that the level of violence might decrease as a function of accumulated positive experiences associated with increased prosocial behavior (Kokko & Pulkkinen, 2000b). Furthermore, it has also been shown that child and adolescent aggression is associated with poor school achievement (e.g., Bergman & Magnusson, 1997; Brook & Newcomb, 1995; Caspi, Elder, & Bem, 1987; Kokko & Pulkkinen, 2000a) and school dropout (e.g., Cairns, Cairns, & Neckerman, 1989; Ensminger & Slusarcick, 1992; Fergusson & Horwood, 1998), which are further related to later problems in the domain of work such as unemployment (Caspi, Wright, Moffitt, & Silva, 1998; Fergusson & Horwood, 1998; Kokko & Pulkkinen, 2000a). However, prosocial tendencies buffered highly aggressive children against long-term unemployment in adulthood (Kokko & Pulkkinen, 2000a). In the present study, we

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examined whether the protective effects of prosociality could already be seen in the rates of school dropout among the aggressive boys. The protective effects of prosociality were tested as compensatory additive effects and protective effects. By compensatory effects, it is meant that the risk of a negative effect (physical aggression) is reduced by a positive effect (prosocial behavior; Fergusson, Beautrais, & Horwood, 2003) in the entire sample. By protective effects, it is meant that favorable influences of a protective factor (prosocial behavior) exercise their influence only on highrisk individuals (the aggressive; Rutter, 1987). The compensatory effect corresponds to a main effect opposite to a risk factor, whereas a protective effect corresponds to an interaction between the protective factor and a risk factor. In summary, the present study of a large sample of boys attempted for the first time to identify the links between the developmental trajectories of prosocial behavior and physical aggression during middle childhood, and to identify to what extent these two types of developmental trajectories complement each other when used to predict problem behavior during adolescence. METHOD Participants Participants were drawn from the ongoing Montreal Longitudinal and Experimental Study. This sample consists of boys who were originally selected from French-speaking low socioeconomic areas of Montreal and who were first assessed in 1984 at the age of 6 (mean age 6.2 years, SD 5 .3) by their kindergarten teachers. Eighty-seven percent of the teachers responded, yielding information on 1,161 boys from 53 schools. In order to control for ethnic background, those boys whose parent(s) were not born in Canada or did not speak French as a mother tongue were excluded from the sample. After taking these criteria into account, as well as those who refused to participate, the final sample of white, homogeneous French-speaking boys totaled 1,037. For further information, see Nagin and Tremblay (1999). At age 6 (in 1984), about 69% of the 1,025 boys lived with both parents, whereas the rest lived either in a nonintact family (25%) or in a reconstructed family (6%). The mean age of the mothers at the time of the birth of the first child was 23.3 years (SD 5 4.1), and the respective mean age of the fathers was 26.4 years (SD 5 5.0). On average, the mothers had completed 10.5 years of schooling (SD 5 2.8) and fathers 10.6 years (SD 5 3.3). On the Canadian socioeconomic index for occupations (Blishen, Carroll, & Moore, 1987), the mean score was 38.2 (SD 5 12.1) for mothers and 39.4 (SD 5 12.9) for fathers.

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In the present study, information yielded by teacher-ratings from ages 6 to 12 and self-ratings as well as registers (school-dropout) at age 17 was used. Data on physical aggression and prosociality were available as follows: 94% of the age 6 sample at age 10; 91% at age 11; and 85% at age 12. For the trajectory analyses of physically aggressive and prosocial behaviors, we selected those boys who were assessed at least twice over the period from age 6 to 12, yielding a sample size of 1,025. Thus, 12 boys were excluded from the trajectory analyses. These boys did not differ from the 1,025 boys included in the analyses in terms of social behavior at age 6 or family characteristics. At age 17, 76% of the boys filled out self-reports and information about school dropout was available for 96% of the boys. Measures Trajectories of physical aggression and prosocial behavior from age 6 to 12. Physical aggression and prosocial behavior were assessed by the teacher most knowledgeable about the child at ages 6 and 10, 11, and 12 with the Social Behavior Questionnaire (SBQ; Tremblay et al., 1991). The SBQ consists of 38 items that have been subjected to a factor analysis, producing four broader factors: disruptive behavior, anxiety, inattentiveness, and prosocial behavior. A subscale for disruptiveness includes three items for physical aggression. In the present study, we used information about physical aggression and prosociality. Physical aggression was a sum score of the following three items: Kicks, bites, hits other children; fights with other children; and bullies or intimidates other children. Teachers were asked to rate each child on a scale from 0 (does not apply) to 2 (certainly applies). The reliabilities ranged from .79 to .88. For further information on this aggression scale, see Tremblay et al. (1991), Nagin and Tremblay (1999), and Brame et al. (2001). Prosocial behavior was a sum score of the following ten items: If there is a quarrel or dispute will try to stop it; will invite bystanders to join in a game; will try to help someone who has been hurt; spontaneously helps to pick up objects which another child has dropped (e.g., pencils, books, etc.); takes the opportunity to praise the work of less able children; shows sympathy to someone who has made a mistake; offers to help other children who are having difficulty with a task in the classroom; helps other children who are feeling sick; comforts a child who is crying or upset; and volunteers to help clear up a mess someone else has made. Teachers rated the children using a scale from 0 to 2. The reliabilities (Cronbachs as) of the sum scores ranged from .87 to .92. For further information about this scale, see Tremblay et al. (1992).

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Measures of problem behaviors at age 17. We followed Vitaro, Larocque, Janosz, and Tremblays (2001) definition of school dropout: A dropout is an individual who stops attending school before high school graduation, whether or not he or she reenters at a later time (p. 407). Information about school dropout was collected from the computerized lists of the Montreal school board and the Ministry of Education and the participants themselves. If a participant was not listed on the annual School board list, the Ministry of Education was contacted in order to find out whether the participant had moved to another school board within the bec. The participants themselves were also asked to Province of Que confirm whether they had left school during the annual data collection period. At 17, 16.4% of the boys had dropped out of school. Physical violence. Physically violent behavior was assessed using seven self-reported items, on a scale from 1 (never) to 4 (often) (Nagin & Tremblay, 1999). These items were as follows: fist fighting, gang fighting, carrying or using a deadly weapon, threatening or attacking someone, and throwing an object at someone. The reliability (Cronbachs a) of the sum score was .78. The sum score for physical violence was dichotomized, using a 75th percentile cut-off (0 5 no behavior in question, 1 5 yes behavior in question), for three reasons: first, we were interested in the frequencies of the highly physically violent individuals among different trajectory groups. Second, the associations between antecedents (trajectories) and outcomes were indicated as odds ratios (OR). As argued by Farrington and Loeber (2000), the use of OR results in a more understandable interpretation of the observed associations and, in some cases, a more realistic interpretation than the use of more conventional statistics allows for (e.g., productmoment correlation). Third, the distribution of the sum score for physical violence indicated that there were a large number of participants (55.4%) who never showed any indication of violence. Consequently, even log transformations of the sum score would have failed to transform it into normal distribution. Farrington and Loeber also provide some evidence for the one-quarter/three-quarters split as an acceptable way of the dichotomization. Data Analysis Descriptive statistics were calculated using Pearsons productmoment correlations for aggression and prosociality items at different ages and for the associations between aggression and prosociality. Developmental trajectories of physical aggression and prosocial behavior were estimated using a group-based semi-parametric method (Jones, Nagin, & Roeder,

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2001; Nagin, 1999; Nagin & Tremblay, 2001a). With this method it is possible to (a) identify distinct subgroups among the study population; (b) estimate the proportion of the study population following each trajectory; and (c) assign individuals to this trajectory group, where they most likely belong. The software used to estimate trajectories was an SAS-based procedure (Jones et al., 2001). Because the data used to estimate the trajectories were based on psychometric scales with censoring at the scale minimum and maximum, trajectory estimation used the censored normal option in the SAS procedure for model estimation (Nagin, 1999). Determination of the optimal number of groups and trajectory shapes was guided by the Bayesian information criterion (BIC), which is calculated in the following way: BIC logL 0:5 logn k; where L is the models maximized likelihood; n is the sample size; and k is the number of the models parameters. It is recommended that the model with the maximum BIC is selected. Different trajectory groups can follow different orders of the polynomial: a second-order trajectory is based on a quadratic equation; a first-order trajectory follows a linear equation in which b2 is equal to zero; and a zero-order trajectory is indicated by a flat line in which both b1 and b2 are equal to zero (Nagin, 1999). The links between the trajectories of physical aggression and prosociality were analyzed using cross-tabulation and between the trajectories and later dichotomous problem behaviors using logistic regression analysis. In each case, physical aggression and prosociality trajectories were first entered, and in the next step an interaction effect between them was added. Specifically planned contrasts were also used in order to better understand the interactive effects between physical aggression and prosociality. That is, the developmental outcomes of highly aggressive boys who were high versus low in prosociality were compared.

RESULTS Descriptive Results As shown by mean values in Table 1, there was a general trend for both aggression and prosocial behavior to decrease with increasing age. Furthermore, the table indicates that the correlations among the aggression scales over time (r 5 .22.51) were higher than among the prosociality scales (r 5 .16.23). Finally, the correlations between the aggression and

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TABLE 1 Descriptives and Pearsons ProductMoment Correlations among Aggression and Prosocial Behavior at Ages 6 and 1012 Variable 1. Aggression (6) 2. Aggression (10) 3. Aggression (11) 4. Aggression (12) 5. Prosociality (6) 6. Prosociality (10) 7. Prosociality (11) 8. Prosociality (12) 1. .37nnn .34nnn .22nnn .16nnn .18nnn .06 .07n 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. M SD 1.76 1.75 1.62 1.24 4.96 4.89 4.65 4.19

.51nnn .41nnn .17nnn .18nnn .06 .05

.48nnn .17nnn .08n .09nn .08n

.15nnn .07n .23nnn .06 .20nnn .22nnn .07n .16nnn .19nnn .20nnn

1.41 1.37 1.18 .76 8.00 6.92 6.41 5.65

Note. nnnpo.001; nnpo.01; npo.05. Numbers in parentheses indicate participants age in years at time of measurement. Number of participants varied from 849 to 1,025 depending on the data available. Scale for Aggression from 0 to 6 and for Prosociality from 0 to 20.

prosocial scales were negative, but generally low, both concurrently (r 5 .07 to .18) and across time (r 5 .05 to .18).

Trajectories of Physical Aggression and Prosocial Behavior from Age 6 to 12 On the basis of the maximized BIC (and previous results in the case of physical aggression; see Brame et al., 2001), a three-group model was selected for physical aggression, whereas a two-group model was chosen for prosocial behavior as the best-fitting models. Table 2 shows the mean group assignment probabilities, conditional on assignment by the maximum likelihood probability rule for each physical aggression group and each prosociality group. The maximum likelihood probability rule implies that individuals on a given trajectory should have a higher mean probability of assignment to this group compared with other groups. All probabilities were higher than .80, a value that is generally assumed to imply a good model fit to the data (Nagin, 2005). As indicated in Figure 1, the trajectories of physical aggression from age 6 to 12 (and the estimation of the proportion of the population following each trajectory) were as follows: (1) low (35.5%), (2) moderate (46.2%), and (3) high declining (18.3%). The low group followed a trajectory reflecting a gradual linear decline from low physical aggression at age 6 to minimal

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TABLE 2 Mean Group Average Physical Aggression and Prosociality Group Assignment Probabilities, Conditional on Assignment by Maximum Probability Rule Mean Trajectory groups Physical aggression 1. Low 2. Moderate 3. High declining Prosociality 1. Low declining 2. Moderate declining SD

.83 .80 .83 .83 .81

.14 .13 .15 .15 .15

aggression by age 12. The moderate and high declining groups had quadratic trajectories, indicating that there was a slight increase in the rate of the decline in their physical aggressiveness as they aged. Figure 2 shows that the two trajectories of prosocial behavior (and the estimated proportions) were as follows: (1) low declining (57.6%) and (2) moderate declining (42.4%). Both trajectories declined gradually from age 6 to 12. For the low group, this trend was captured by a linear trajectory whereas for the high group the trend was quadratic, which reflects a small acceleration in the rate of decline. Co-occurence of Physical Aggression and Prosociality Cross-tabulation of physical aggression and prosociality indicated that boys low in aggression were evenly distributed to the low (50.4%) and moderate (49.6%) groups of prosociality (Table 3). However, as the level of aggression increased, the level of prosocial behavior decreased: 62.8% of boys moderate in physical aggression were also low in prosociality and 79.3% of boys who followed high trajectory in physical aggression showed a low level of prosociality. There was a small subgroup of boys (n 5 35) who, despite their severe physical aggression throughout middle childhood, also showed a moderate level of prosocial behavior during the same time period. Links between Trajectories and Problem Behaviors at Age 17 Academic attainment. Using logistic regression analysis, we first studied whether the trajectories of physical aggression and prosocial

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4 Physical Aggression

0 6
Low-actual Low-pred-35.5%

10 Age
Moderate-actual Moderate-pred-46.2%

11

12
High declining-actual High declining-pred-18.3%

FIGURE 1 Trajectories of physical aggression from age 612. The solid lines represent actual behavior and the dashed lines represent predicted behaviors (for their respective computation, see Nagin, 1999, p. 3).

behavior in middle childhood were linked to school dropout at age 17. Aggression and prosociality were entered first in the model. The results showed that aggression was significantly related to later school dropout, w2(2, N 5 984) 5 44.35, p 5 .000, whereas prosociality was not, w2(1, N 5 984) 5 0.02, p 5 .88. Being on the high declining trajectory of physical aggression, compared with the trajectory of low physical aggression, increased the risk of school dropout by a factor of 5.86 (95% confidence interval [CI], 3.489.86). Also, being on the moderate aggression trajectory increased the likelihood of dropping out of school compared with low aggression by a factor of 2.78 (95% CI, 1.774.39). There was also an increased risk of school dropout among the highly aggressive compared with the moderately aggressive (OR 5 2.10; 95% CI, 1.393.18). Interaction between the trajectories of physical aggression and prosociality was then added to the model and was found to be nonsignificant (Table 4). Similarly, the contrast between highly

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12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

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Prosocial Behavior

10 Age

11

12

Low declining-actual and low declining-pred-57.6% Moderate declining-actual and moderate declining-pred-42.4%

FIGURE 2

Trajectories of prosocial behavior from age 612.

aggressive children with and without prosociality was not significant (Table 4). Physical violence. We again began by testing the effects of physical aggression and prosocial behavior on physical violence at age 17 and then added an interaction to the model. Only aggression was significantly related to physical violence, w2(2, N 5 790) 5 25.04, p 5 .000; prosociality had no significant association w2(1, N 5 790) 5 0.05, p 5 .82. High declining aggression increased the risk of being physically violent compared with a low level of aggression by a factor of 3.21 (95% CI, 1.975.22), whereas the respective value for moderate aggression was 2.04 (95% CI, 1.412.94).
TABLE 3 Cross-Tabulation of Trajectories of Physical Aggression and Prosocial Behavior (Ages 612) Prosocial Behavior Physical Aggression 1. Low 2. Moderate 3. High declining 1. Low Declining 193 (50.4) 297 (62.8) 134 (79.3) 2. Moderate Declining 190 (49.6) 176 (37.2) 35 (20.7) Total 383 (100) 473 (100) 169 (100)

Note. w2(2, N 5 1,025) 5 42.47, po.001. Number of participants (%) in each cell indicated.

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TABLE 4 Summary of Logistic Regression Analyses in which Trajectories for Physical Aggression and Prosocial Behavior Predict Problem Behaviors at Age 17 (minimum n 5 790, maximum n 5 984) Variable School dropout Step 1 Physical aggression (PA) Prosocial behavior (PRO) Step 2 PA PRO PA PRO Physical violence Step 1 PA PRO Step 2 PA PRO PA PRO Wald w2 df p

44.35 .02 37.66 .04 .05

2 1 2 1 2

.000 .880 .000 .847 .973

25.04 .05 26.03 .10 1.39

2 1 2 1 2

.000 .823 .000 .757 .498

Compared with the moderate trajectory, being on a high aggression trajectory increased the risk of violence by 1.57 (95% CI, 1.012.46). Neither the interaction term (Table 3) nor the planned contrasts were significant (Table 5).2
A previous study by Nagin and Tremblay (2001b) showed that low maternal education significantly increased the odds of following chronic and high trajectories of physical aggression. Also, in this study, low maternal education (0 5 no, 1 5 yes) was related to both aggression and prosociality: the risk of belonging to a high declining trajectory of aggression was increased by a factor of 2.33 compared with low aggression and by a factor of 1.83 compared with moderate aggression if the mother had low education. Furthermore, low maternal education increased the risk of following a trajectory of low prosociality by a factor of 1.48 compared with moderate declining prosociality. The findings for low maternal socioeconomic status (SES) and for low paternal education and SES were inconsistent: maternal low SES was modestly associated with high aggression (compared with low), but did not contribute to prosocial behavior; whereas paternal low education was related to high and moderate aggression (compared with low), but did not account for prosociality. Low paternal SES was weakly linked to low prosocial behavior, but did not contribute to aggression. When interpreting these results, it is important to note that all the boys were originally from low SES families; thus, their socioeconomic background was relatively homogeneous. In order to study whether low maternal education might explain the obtained findings on the predictions between the trajectories of aggression and adolescent school dropout and physical
2

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TABLE 5 Summary of Comparisons between Trajectories for Physical Aggression and Prosocial Behavior and Contrasts between them in Predicting Problem Behaviors at Age 17 (minimum n 5 790, maximum n 5 984): Odds Ratios (95% Confidence Intervals) Variable Trajectory groups High declining versus low physical aggression (PA) High declining versus moderate PA Moderate versus Low PA Moderate declining versus low prosociality (PRO) High PA, low declining PRO versus high declining PA, moderate declining PRO
Note. nnnpo.001; npo.05.

School dropout 5.86 (3.489.86)nnn 2.10 (1.393.18)nnn 2.78 (1.774.39)nnn 1.03 (.711.49) 1.12 (.492.58)

Physical violence 3.21 (1.975.22)nnn 1.57 (1.012.46)n 2.04 (1.412.94)nnn 1.04 (.741.45) .64 (.251.64)

DISCUSSION The goals of the present study were, first, to test, with developmental trajectories between 6 and 12 years of age, to what extent socialization would both decrease the frequency of physical aggression and increase the frequency of prosocial behavior; second, to investigate the links between the developmental trajectories of physical aggression and prosocial behaviors from age 6 to 12 among prospectively followed boys and; third, to study whether trajectories of physical aggression and prosocial behavior during the elementary school years predicted school dropout and physical violence at 17 years of age, with a special focus on those children who were high in aggression but differed in terms of prosocial manifestations. In line with previous research (Brame et al., 2001; Broidy et al., 2003), we found that there were different developmental subgroups of physical aggression from age 6 to 12. Low and moderate levels of aggressive behavior showed stability throughout middle childhood, whereas a high initial level of aggression tended to decrease over the childhood years. Broidy et al. (2003) also identified three trajectories of physical aggression in three
violence, all the logistic regression analyses were re-run controlling for the low maternal education. The findings remained the same, except for the insignificant changes in the estimates. These results can be obtained from the first author on request.

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male samples of the same ages from New Zealand and the United States; however, our chronic group included a higher percentage of chronic cases (18% versus 711%). This difference could be explained by the fact that the Montreal sample was drawn from low socioeconomic areas in a large city, while the other samples were population samples gathered from relatively small towns. As for prosocial behavior, we identified only two developmental trajectories: low declining and moderate declining. It should be noted that there was a general tendency for prosociality to decrease over time, as shown by both descriptive statistics and developmental trajectories. This is a noteworthy finding because Eisenberg and Fabes (1998) metaanalysis of age differences in prosociality showed that prosociality tended to increase with age. However, this meta-analysis was largely based on cross-sectional studies using different instruments at different ages. With a population sample of boys followed prospectively from 6 to 12 years of te et al. (2002) found three developmental trajectories of prosocial age, Co behavior. The high trajectory, which included only about 2% of the boys, te et al., was not obtained in this study. The other two trajectories of Co moderate and low, were similar to the present trajectories. The absence of boys on the high developmental trajectory of prosociality might be related to the fact that the present sample was drawn from low socioeconomic te et al. (2002) sample was a more background parents, whereas the Co te et al. study indicate that representative sample. This study and the Co when prosociality is assessed over time, using the same measures at different ages, there is a declining trend. This declining trend was also observed with 713-year-old Italian school children assessed annually by teachers (Caprara et al., 2001). The theories of antisocial and prosocial behavior development are presently based on very limited developmental information. Longitudinal studies with repeated measurements that will measure different dimensions of prosocial and antisocial behavior are needed to understand developmental trajectories for each dimension and to understand the links between these different dimensions. For example, indirect aggression seems to increase with increasing age while physical aggression decreases (Tremblay & Nagin, 2005; Vaillancourt, 2005). The cross-tabulation of physical aggression and prosocial trajectories indicated that it is quite rare for 612-year-old boys to follow a high physical aggression trajectory and a moderate prosocial trajectory. Indeed, only 3.4% of all boys manifested this developmental trend. However, these boys still represented 21% of the highly aggressive boys. This is an indication that prosocial behavior and physical aggression are not always opposite ends of a single continuum. Support for this conclusion can also be seen at the other end of the spectrum. Only 50% of the boys on a

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moderate prosocial trajectory were also on a low physical aggression trajectory. Thus, the cross-tabulation of the prosocial behavior and physical aggression trajectories during the elementary school years for males from low socioeconomic areas support the notion of physical aggression and prosociality being relatively independent types of behavior, that is, not only the opposite ends of the same continuum (Feshbach & Feshbach, 1986; Krueger et al., 2001; Pulkkinen, 1984). When aggression and prosocial behavior are considered relatively independent types of behaviors, it is reasonable to assume that the same individual can show different types of responses in different situations. It has actually been shown that socalled bistrategic adolescents (i.e., who manifest both prosocial and coercive behaviors) may be quite effective in, for example, their peer contexts (Hawley, 2003). Still, individuals may show some general patterns of behaviors across aggregated situations and over time. The prediction of problem behaviors at 17 years of age using the middle childhood trajectories of physical aggression and prosocial behavior confirmed that problems in elementary school predict problems at the end of high school, but our main focus was on the additive and interactive effects of these two behavioral trajectories. Concerning additive effects, trajectories of procial behavior did not add to the predictive power of physical aggression for school dropout or physical violence. Neither did it protect aggressive children against later problem behavior. It was shown that school dropout at age 17 was strongly related to being on a high trajectory of aggression: the highly aggressive boys were about six times more likely to drop out of school compared with the non-aggressive boys. Prosociality did not contribute to school problems; neither did it have interactive effects with aggression. These findings are concordant with results from previous studies that show that early aggression is linked to subsequent problems in the domain of academic achievement (e.g., Bergman & Magnusson, 1997; Brook & Newcomb, 1995; Caspi et al., 1987; Fergusson & Horwood, 1998; Kokko & Pulkkinen, 2000a) and even school dropout (e.g., Cairns et al., 1989; Ensminger & Slusarcick, 1992). However, they differ from the only other study, which contrasted physical aggression and prosocial behavior as predictors of school achievement. With an Italian sample, Caprara, Barbaranelli, Pastorelli, Bandura, and Zimbardo (2000) observed that it was prosocial behavior at age 89, instead of aggression that positively predicted school achievement at age 1314, even after controlling for the earlier level of school achievement. The difference with the results of the latter study could be due to differences in samples and content of variables. First, whereas the Montreal sample included only boys from families with low education, the Italian sample included both boys and girls from families with various

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educational backgrounds. Second, the present study was focused on school dropout while the Italian study was focused on variation in school grades. Physical violence at age 17, like school dropout, was predicted solely by earlier physical aggression. Numerous previous studies reported the associations between early aggression and later violence and delinquency (e.g., Coie & Dodge, 1998; Loeber & Hay, 1997; Nagin & Tremblay, 2001a; Rutter et al., 1998). The link between physical aggression in childhood and physical violence in adolescence indicates that there exists a strong, homotypic continuity (Caspi & Roberts, 1999) in this type of overt problem behavior. The fact that prosociality did not protect against the later harmful effects of physical aggression might be explained by the age of the present participants. Both school dropout and physical violence were measured at age 17. It has been argued by Arnett (2000) that in western countries, the late teenage years are part of a distinct life phase, called emerging adulthood, which is neither adolescence nor adulthood. This period of life is characterized by many changes (e.g., graduation from school, moving from home), explorations of possible life directions and identities, and relative independence from normative social roles. It is common that emergent adults have not yet settled down either to work or family life. The late teens of the present study were in this turbulent life phase and it is possible that individual characteristics, such as prosocial tendencies, did not play as much of a role in their social behavior as is expected in later life phases. In fact, previous studies show that childhood personality characteristics, especially aggression, do not explain long-term unemployment at age 27 (Kokko, Bergman, & Pulkkinen, 2003), but do contribute to it 10 years later when the participants lives were more independent of the developmental transitions and explorations of early adulthood (Kokko & Pulkkinen, 2000a). At age 36, childhood aggression significantly explained serious difficulties in the domain of work, but among some initially aggressive individuals, childhood prosociality protected them against long-term unemployment. This might indicate that the protective effects of prosociality for some outcomes are long term, rather than short term. It needs to be seen whether the positive effects of prosocial tendencies are observable at later ages among these followed Montreal boys. Another potential explanation for the lack of compensatory or protective effects of prosocial behavior might be related to methodological issues: the present sample and the present context of the prosocial assessment. These Montreal boys were originally from low SES familyenvironment and it is possible that their prosocial behavior did not help them because of the contextual factors (i.e., it may not even be valued). In a

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different context, a positive compensatory or protective effect might be found. Eisenberg et al. (2002) argue that even less stability of prosociality can be expected in children growing up in low SES families because of the instability of the life circumstancesalthough this is not true in the Caprara et al. (2001) study with middle-class children. It may also be that the level of prosocial behavior achieved by the boys from this low SES sample was not high enough to protect them against the harmful consequences of using physical aggression. This interpretation is supported by the absence te et al. (2002). Furtherof the high trajectory of prosociality found by Co more, teacher assessments of prosocial behavior were used in this study. Teachers see the students in structured settings (i.e., the classroom), which may not reflect the levels of prosocial behavior in less structured settings, such as peer groups, within and outside of school. These methodological issues need to be taken into account when making any interpretations of the present findings for prevention and intervention efforts. In addition to the issue of a homogeneous sample drawn from a low SES background, there are two other issues that might restrict the generalizability of the present results: first, we studied only boys in the present study. Although the importance of studying prosociality among boys has been stressed (Hay, 1994), it would be interesting to examine whether the present findings would replicate among girls. It also needs to be seen whether our findings will apply to participants from families with different cultural backgrounds. Second, our measure of prosocial behavior was related to overt manifestations of this characteristic, such as helping behavior. In addition to the behavioral (helping) dimension, for instance, Hoffman (2001) conceptualizes prosociality to include cognitive (moral reasoning) and emotional/motivational (empathy, guilt) aspects. It would be important to study whether these aspects of prosociality show similar age-related trends and how they relate to contemporaneous physical aggression and subsequent social behavior. There are some studies that imply that different types of prosociality show different patterns over time (e.g., Eisenberg et al., 1987; Fabes et al., 1999; Hastings et al., 2000; Hay, 1994; Jackson & Tisak, 2001; Keltikangas-Ja rvinen, 2001), depending also on the informant used (Caprara et al., 2001). As described by Tremblay (2000), measures of aggressive behavior often aggregate indices of aggression, antisocial behavior, and conduct disorder. Further measures of direct and indirect aggression as well as measures of reactive and proactive aggression are sometimes combined. Regarding direct physical aggression, the differentiation of reactive and proactive aggression seems to be crucial. Pulkkinen (1996) and Vitaro, Gendreau, Tremblay, and Oligny (1998) showed that proactively aggressive children were more likely to manifest antisocial

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behavior later than nonaggressive and reactively aggressive children. We focused on physical aggression in the present study. In the future, it would be useful to study the developmental trajectories of different forms of aggression (reactive and proactive physical aggression, and indirect aggression) and their links to different forms of prosociality, such as helping, moral reasoning, and emotional aspects of prosocial behavior. Furthermore, it would be important to investigate the complemented effects of physical aggression and prosociality on outcome measures other than school dropout and violence for women and men at different ages. There were several strengths in the present attempt to understand the development of physical aggression and prosocial behavior in middle childhood and their links to later problem behavior. First of all, we studied aggression and prosociality at the same time. Several researchers have urgently advocated investigating their joint effects. Second, we used a groupbased semi-parametric mixture method (Nagin, 1999), which is particularly well suited for analyzing developmental trajectories of the behaviors in question. Using this method, it was possible to identify groups that differed from each other in both the level of behavior and the shape of the developmental trend of this behavior. In addition to constant and linear developmental trends, non-linear trajectories were found. By examining the developmental trends, we were able to identify children who were low, moderate, or high (in physical aggression only) in aggression and prosociality throughout the childhood years. We assume that the classification based on developmental trajectories yielded more reliable information about the childs behavioral tendencies than just relying on the classifications based on single time-point measures and somewhat arbitrary cut-off points.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research has been supported by research grants from the Academy of Finland (Nr. 54489 and Nr. 55289), the Fonds pour la Formation de ` la Recherche (FCAR-Centre), the Conseil Que be cois Chercheurs et lAide a du de la Recherche Sociale (CQRS), the Fonds de la Recherche en Sante bec (FRSQ), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Que Canada (SSHRC), the Molson Foundation, the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research, and the US National Institute of Mental Health (RO1 MH65611-01A2). We thank Danielle Forest for her help with the statistical le ` ne Beauchesne for coordinating the data collection, Muriel analyses, He Rorive for coordinating the data management, and Lyse DesmaraisGervais for general coordination of the research activities.

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