Helping Girls Cope with and Communicate about Social Aggression

Online, July 2, 2010 (Newswire.com) - Middle school is a time for change. Students' bodies are changing. Adolescents begin to discover that the opposite sex doesn't have cooties after all. They aren't kids anymore, but they aren't adults, either. Their friends from elementary school don't sit with them at the lunch table and they're not sure if it's good or bad. Middle school is a difficult time for most young women, and a big reason for that is the social aggression girls show towards one another.

Erin K. Willer, Ph.D. presented an online seminar about her research-based methods for helping young women cope with the painful emotional effects of girl-on-girl social aggression.

Willer's definition of social aggression is displaying behaviors that damage an individual's self-concept and/or her relationships with peers.

"So these aren't just behaviors that are hurtful to a girl herself, but also her interactions with other people, such as friends or romantic interests," Willer said.

Social aggression can include social ostracism, revealing secrets, talking behind backs, and verbal attacks. Social aggression can be non-verbal, too. Glaring and eye-rolling are non-verbal, but so is manipulating relationships with other students.

Willer said girls who are dealing with girl-on-girl social aggression don't just have emotional distress. Social aggression can actually lead to physical pains, too,"

"These mental health symptoms include things like depression, social anxiety, social avoidance and loneliness, as well as the negative emotions, such as hurt, embarrassment, anger, sadness and revenge.

"The big question out there is, why social aggression among girls? For the most part, in the media, we get the sense that girls are so much meaner than boys, but actually, research suggests that there are trivial differences between girls and boys and the perpetration of social aggression," Willer said. "Research suggests that both girls and boys are socially aggressive, not just girls. However, girls do tend to experience more psychological distress than boys. Boys - maybe they tend to be more verbally aggressive - but we haven't identified those things"

Because of the psychological impact social aggression has on young women Willer set out to conduct her own research on the subject. Her goal with the research was to create ways adults can help girls cope with their feelings that are associated with this common behavior.

Willer met one-on-one with 42 middle school girls (sixth to eighth graders) four times over the course of nine weeks to discuss the feelings they had from encounters with social aggression.

On day one she asked them to think about a time during middle school that a girl or girls did or said something hurtful to them. She asked them to tell them a story about it.

"This method is called narrative sense-making or storytelling," Willer said. "It gives language to thoughts and feelings and that helps people organize the bad events that happened. This makes it more manageable."

Willer said the keys to assisting the girls with feeling better about themselves is to get their thoughts out of their mind so they don't dwell on them.

"When you can write or talk about feelings, they stop swimming around in your head. It will reduce negative emotions and can experience reduction in depression," Willer said.

On the second day Willer asked the girls to draw an externalizing metaphor. Willer said it should be a picture that describes how it made them feel. On the third day Willer asked them to draw a redemption metaphor.

"I asked them to draw something positive that came out of the meanness," Willer said. "I didn't ask them to throw the mean feelings away, but rather, to just place them on the side for a little bit."

After these three sessions Willer measured the exercises' effectiveness with helping the girls with their feelings. Her research shows that the girls showed fewer negative emotions after the exercises then before them. Willer is pleased with the outcomes, but is hesitant to declare victory.

"This suggests that engaging in these sense-making processes does help them feel better mentally, at least statistically, which is good. [But] we need more research to validate the methods that I used in different settings," Willer said. "While these methods that I'm sharing with you are a good starting place, we really need to keep trying different methods like this to see what works and what doesn't."