Play fighting to cope with reactive and pro-active aggression in young adolescents from low-income urban communities

Aim Aggressive behaviour is one of the most frequent antisocial behaviours in adolescents, particularly in those living in low-income urban communities (Rivara, 2002). Participation in sport, particularly in those involving significant physical contact like play fighting, has been proved having positive effects in reducing young adolescents' aggression (Carraro et al., 2014). The purpose of this study was to analyse the effects of play fighting on self-reported aggression in a group of youths from low-income urban communities. Method A sample of 98 young adolescents (boys=66; girls=32; mean age=13.4±1.2 years) from eight Youth Recreation Centres for adolescents with problematic background were initially involved in the study. Participants were invited to take part in a play fighting activity and 33 joined it constituting the play fighting group (PFG), while 65 did not attend any extra activities and constituted the control group (CG). The PFG participated in 12 1-hour per week sessions on chasing and wrestling games. All the participants filled in the Reactive Proactive Aggression Questionnaire (Raine et al., 2006) pre and post intervention. Twenty-two youths dropped out, so 76 completed the study (PFG n=31; CG n= 45). Results Independent sample t-tests shown no significant differences between PFG and CG at the baseline in both the pro-active and reactive aggression sub-scales of the questionnaire. A One-way ANOVA on gain scores was used to check for pre-post differences between groups. In the PFG pro-active (F=10.67; p<.01) and reactive (F=5.66; p<.05) aggression significantly decreased in comparison with the CG. Conclusion Results suggest a positive effect of play fighting games in reducing pro-active and reactive aggression. More research, with larger samples and with a longer intervention, is required to confirm results. References Carraro, A., Gobbi, E., Moè, A. (2014). Brief report: play fighting to curb self-reported aggression in young adolescents, Journal of Adolescence, 37, 1003-1007. Raine, A., Dodge, K., Loeber, R., Gatzke-Kopp, L., Lynam, D., Reynolds, C., ... & Liu, J. (2006). The reactive–proactive aggression questionnaire: Differential correlates of reactive and proactive aggression in adolescent boys. Aggressive behavior, 32(2), 159. Rivara, F.P. (2002). Understanding and preventing violence in children and adolescents, Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 156, 746–747.