Facts About Relational Aggression

• Relational aggression is behavior that is intended to harm someone by damaging or manipulating his or her relationships with others (Crick and Grotpeter, 1995). Relationally aggressive behaviors include exclusion, malicious gossip and rumor spreading, teasing and name calling, alliance building, covert physical aggression and cyberbullying.

• Relational aggression is significantly associated with social and psychological maladjustment during childhood, adolescence and young adulthood (Crick and Grotpeter, 1995; Prinstein et al., 2001; Rys and Bear, 1997; Werner and Crick, 1999).

• Relationally aggressive children have been shown to become increasingly rejected, withdrawn, anxious, depressed, delinquent and aggressive over the course of middle childhood (Crick et al., 2004; Zimmer-Gembeck et al., 2003).

• Relational aggression has been shown to escalate during the time period of adolescence (Bjorkqvist et al., 1992; Owens et al., 2000; Werner and Hill, 2004).

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