Relational aggression and coping strategies: A comparison of sex-typed and androgynous adolescents

Research on aggression is mixed regarding gender effects. Some research suggests that girls are more relationally aggressive than boys, while boys are more overtly aggressive than girls. Other studies have found that boys are more relationally and overtly aggressive than girls, while other research suggests that aggression is equal across genders. To address these discrepancies, our study examined the relationship between sex-role adherence and aggression. Specifically, we were interested in determining if sex-typed individuals would report greater adherence to sex-typed aggressive behaviors. We also examined the effects of androgyny on the use of aggressive behaviors and coping strategies. 101 adolescent participants completed an online survey to determine sex-role type, use of aggression and use of coping strategies. Teacher reports were also used to supplement student self-reports. We found that those who scored lower in femininity tended to score higher on both relational and overt aggression in our sample. We also found that those who scored higher in masculinity tended to score higher on overt aggression. Undifferentiated individuals scored higher than feminine and androgynous individuals on relational aggression, while masculine individuals scored higher than feminine individuals on overt aggression. We also found that androgynous participants scored higher than one or more groups (undifferentiated, sex-typed masculine and/or sex-typed feminine) on 7 of 12 coping strategies. For the most part, our results held for females when our data was split by sex. However, we had a small sample of males in our study that made it difficult to determine gender effects in our results.