The Study of the Aggression Levels of Preschool Children in Terms of Emotion Expression and Emotion Regulation

Abstract

Preschool children may usually behave aggressively during their social interactions. Children’s aggressive behavior can occur for a variety of reasons. Especially, some of children’s qualifications within the scope of their emotional development can play a decisive role in these aggressive behaviors. In this study, the relationship between pre-school children’s (3-5 years of age) skills of expressing emotions and emotion regulation with their level of aggression is examined. In the study, 863 children attending education in kindergartens in Denizli city center were identified as the sample. In the study, Preschool Social Behavior Scale-Teacher Form, Child Emotion Expression Scale-Mother Form and Emotion Regulation Scale were used for data collection purposes. Children’s aggression levels were assessed by their teachers, while their ability to express emotions and emotion regulation were evaluated by their mothers through the relevant measuring tools. Children’s aggression levels were assessed in sub-dimensions of physical and relational aggression; and their ability to express emotion was discussed in sub-dimensions of happy, sad, angry and frightened through measuring tools. Children’s emotion regulation skills were examined within the framework of emotion regulation and variability/negativity sub-dimensions in addition to the total score of emotion regulation obtained by inverse encoding of all negative items in the Emotion Regulation Scale. Research data were examined via the t test to determine whether children’s physical and relational aggression levels differed significantly in terms of gender, and via variance analysis (ANOVA) to determine whether they differed significantly in terms of age. Hierarchical multiple linear regression analysis was utilized to determine the predictor power of children’s emotion expression skills and emotion regulation skills for their physical and relational aggression levels. Research results show that only physical aggression levels of children differ significantly in terms of gender variables. However, it was observed that both physical and relational aggression levels of children differed significantly in terms of their age. According to the results of regression analysis, the physical aggression of children, their levels of expressing angry, sad and frightened feelings were significantly predicted by their total levels of emotion regulation and their levels of variability/negativity which is sub-dimension of emotion regulation. In addition, it was observed that children’s relational aggression is significantly predicted by the levels of anger and sad emotion expression and the level of variability/negativity, which is the lower dimension of emotion regulation skills. The findings were discussed within the scope of related studies in the field, and various recommendations were presented to both practitioners and future researchers within the framework of the results obtained in the study.