Temperamental patterns in aggressive boys

Four groups of aggressive body ( and one group of controls) were studied, on the basis of: clinical referrals to a hospital clinic; teacher reports of assaultive behaviour in school; teacher reports of severe aggressive behaviour in school; and peer reports of aggressive behaviour. Questionnaire techniques were used to study behaviour and temperament. The last three groups proved to have rather similar patterns of behaviour and temperament and, therefore, they have been combined to give rise to an 'any school criterion' group. We compared three main groups: (i) clinical referrals; (ii) 'any criterion' (school-identified); and (iii) controls. On behaviour, the clinical group had the most adverse scores, especially on antisocial behaviour. The school-identified group also had a higher score than the controls on this dimension, and differed in degree from the clinical referral group. On temperament, the clinical referral group had a significantly more adverse score on all dimensions than both the controls and the 'any criterion' group. The 'any criterion' group scores were intermediate between the other two sets of scores. The differences on temperament between the control and the 'any criterion' groups appeared to be one of degree but not of type. Moreover, no specific type of temperament was associated with the different kinds of aggression we have studied. Principal components analysis supports the notion of no qualitative temperamental differences between the 'any criterion' and the control groups.