Context matters: Norm salience toward aggression moderates the association between parental education and childhood aggressive behavior development

Abstract

This longitudinal study investigated whether classroom norm salience toward aggression moderated the association between parental education and children’s overt aggressive behavior development from third to sixth grade of elementary school. Children (N = 1,205, 51% girls) from 46 Dutch elementary schools were annually followed from third to sixth grade. Norm salience was operationalized by within-classroom correlations between individual children’s peer-nominated social preference and aggression scores. Results from multilevel latent growth models showed that norm salience development from third to sixth grade, but not norm salience in third grade, was a significant moderator. That is, results suggested that in third grade, children of lower-educated parents showed higher levels of overt aggressive behavior than children of higher-educated parents, irrespective of the norm. However, in classrooms where norm salience became more favorable toward aggression over time, children of lower-educated parents showed a slower growth rate of overt aggressive behavior than children of higher-educated parents from third to sixth grade. In classrooms where norm salience became less favorable toward aggression over time, the development of overt aggressive behavior was similar for all children. Findings suggest that classroom norm salience may become more important in the later elementary school years and that children of higher-educated parents may be more able to adapt their behavior toward the classroom norm.