Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Vol. 5, No. 1. 19 76
Effects of Class, Race, Sex, and Educational Status on Patterns of Aggression of Lower-Class Youth Elmer Luchterhand 1 and Leonard Weller 2
Received July 24, 1975
The influence o f class, race, sex, and educational status on ways o f handling aggression and temper control were studied by means o f responses to open- and closed-ended questions. The sample consisted o f 1844 inner-city y o u t h in two northern cities. Race was f o u n d to be the only important discriminator." blacks were less aggressive and exhibited more temper control than whites, but once aggression occurred blacks were more likely than whites to assault others.
INTRODUCTION This study, based on the responses o f a random sample o f 1844 y o u t h , ages 13-19, to open- and closed-ended questions, concerns patterns of aggression o f inner-city youth. It examines the influence o f class, race, educational status, and sex on ways o f handling aggression. 3 It was hypothesized that more aggression would be shown (1) by y o u th from the lowest social class than by those from the adjacent social class, (2) by blacks than by whites, (3) by boys than by
1Professor of Sociology, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, New York. Area of specialization is social psychology. Currently working on an interpretation case history of a holocaust episode in a rural German community. 2Associate Professor of Sociology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. Area of specialization is social psychology. In Israel has studied the effects of ethnicity on a number of attitudinal and behavioral variables. 3This was part of a larger study on the attitudes of inner-city youth to many aspects of their lives. Our main concern was the influence of class, race, and educational status on attitudes toward basic human rights and social change, family relationships, patterns of aggression, and intergroup relations. The data on family relationships have been reported elsewhere (Weller and Luchterhand, 1975a,b). All the items relevant to patterns of aggression are reported in this article. 59 9 1976 Plenum Publishing Corporation, 227 West 17th Street, New Y o r k , N.Y. 10011. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, PhOtOCOPying, m i c r o f i l m i n g , recording, or otherwise, w i t h o u t w r i t t e n permission of the publisher.
60
Luchterhand and WeBer
girls. The educational status variable was included because it proved to be an important discriminator in previous work with this sample. Youth from the lowest social class were expected to be the most aggressive for any of the following reasons: (1) They live more stressful lives; (2) they are taught "to strike out with fist or knife and to be certain to hit first" (Davis, 1944, p. 172); (3) aggression is approved and socially rewarded behavior by the culture and peer group (Lesser, 1959). While these same considerations apply to the black, in greater or lesser degree, the black may also introject prejudices of whites, with consequent feelings of low self-esteem and inferiority (Kardiner and Ovesey, 1951; Pettigrew, 1964). Hostile responses are among the ways of reacting to such feelings. On the other hand, fear of reprisals - not felt as acutely by the white - m a y inhibit the black from responding aggressively and may lead instead to extreme passivity and apathy (Karon, 1958). Some research has shown that when provoked the impulse of many blacks is to fight (Goff, 1950; Hindman, 1953), but on the other hand, this impulse is often inhibited (Hindman, 1953; Johnson, 1957; Mussen, 1953). The hypothesis that boys are more aggressive than girls is supported by various studies (e.g., Clark, 1959; Hindman, 1953). Research on aggression involves complex problems of conceptualization. A balanced review of differences in research uses of the concept is not feasible in a brief paper. The present approach may be seen in the scheme in the Appendix for coding different kinds of aggressive and nonaggressive responses. While situational circumstances and attendant feeling states have to be considered in decidingwhether or not "fighting" is aggressive, it is clear that "running away" never is. The nature of the classificatory problems that arise may be indicated generally by the following examples of responses taken from the present inquiry: "getting angry"; asking someone to move out of one's way; getting a third party to act for one in difficulties with a second party; attacking a valued object.
METHOD Population and Sample
The population from which the sample was drawn consisted of all children 13-19 years of age living in the inner city of one major New England city and five selected census tracts of another. 4 The inner-city enumeration classified the young people according to neighborhood (defined by census tracts), race, sex, and age. Since there were more whites than blacks living in the inner city, whites 4The other city served as a control to one of the neighborhoods in the major city. This control is not relevant to the present aspect of the study but had significance for its later phase, whose primary purpose was program evaluation. The data of both cities were virtually identical and consequently were treated together.
Patterns of Aggression of Lower-Class Youth
61
were sampled by a ratio o f 1:4 and blacks were sampled by a ratio o f 1:3. s Because o f residential clustering, the sampling ratios varied b y census tract. The only large ethnic group was the Italians, who accounted for approximately 30% o f the sample. When a respondent could not be r e a c h e d - usually because he had moved - - h e was replaced by another o f the same race, sex, and age, and living in the same census tract. The sample included parochial and public school youths, as well as those out o f school. Individually administered interviews and group-administered questionnaires were given to 2082 youths between the ages o f 13 and 19, 1577 in New Haven and 505 in Bridgeport. The interviewer and interviewee were matched by race and sex. Sample members were in grades 7-12, had graduated from high school, or were school dropouts. In order not to confound age with educational status, 66 youths who were considerably younger or older than their classmates were removed from the sample. The sample was classified by social class, following Hollingshead's two-factor index o f social position. In keeping with this index, the head o f the household's scale value for occupation was weighted b y a factor o f 7 and the scale value for education by a factor of 4. Most o f the y o u t h were in the lowest (class V) or next to the lowest (class IV) social class. The relatively small number o f youths in classes I-III were omitted from the analysis. A three-way analysis o f variance, according to class, race, and educational status, was computed for each sex separately. For educational status, the sample was divided as follows: grades 7-8, grades 9-10, grades 11-12, high school graduates, and dropouts.
Measurements
Two o f the four items measuring ways o f handling aggression were sentence completion statements: 1. If anyone should stand in Ann's way, she would 2. When something gets me real mad, I_ . The answers to these two questions were coded and scored as follows: nonaggressive responses were scored 0; aggressive responses, excluding "assault on a person," were scored 1; physical assault responses were scored 2. The last category, "physical assault," was given a special weighting because o f the se5Because no enumeration was available in the other city which served as a control, two procedures were relied on to construct the census. For in-school youth the census was based on the school registration records of the seven public schools. From these records a sample was drawn, one in three for blacks and one in four for whites. To obtain a list of out-of-school youth, a sample of one in three dwellings was drawn from the city directory. The people in this sample - canvassed by telephone and in person - were asked to name all 13- to 19-year-olds living in the household. After excluding those already listed by the schools, a sample of out-of-school youth was drawn.
62
Luchtethand and WeBer
riousness of the behavior involved. In this analysis the kinds of nonaggressive responses (categories l, 2, and 3 in the Appendix) and the kinds of aggressive responses (categories 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 in the Appendix) were not considered separately. Two other questions were asked, but in this case the response categories were indicated: 3. If someone tries to push me around, I usually __ fight him. __ tell him off, but fight if pushed enough. __ tell him off or argue with him. leave or do nothing about it. _ _ just tell others what kind of a guy he is. 4. If someone tries to push me around, I should fight him. tell him off, but fight if pushed enough. __ tell him off or argue with him. leave or do nothing about. _ _ . just tell others what kind o f a guy he is.
RESULTS
The means for each item presented separately for boys and girls, and grouped by class and race, are presented in Table I. (Since, except for question 2, educational status was not significant, the means for the varying levels of education are not shown.) The p values for each comparison are also reported in the table. It is evident that race is the single most important factor for both boys and girls. Significant differences were found in three o f the four items. In aU cases,
whites responded more aggressively than blacks. For item 2 only, there were two other significant differences: class V boys responded more aggressively than class IV boys, and younger boys responded more aggressively than older boys. Because sex was not included as a n independent variable in the statistical design, tests o f significance could not be computed. Nevertheless, the boys' scores were compared to those of girls for each class and race combination. In each comparison, the boys were found to be more aggressive than the girls. The only exception was found in item 1, where class IV white girls were more aggressive than class IV white boys. To determine whether there are differences in the type of aggressive response according to race, we cross-classified the five kinds of aggressive responses -nonspecific aggression, indirect aggression, verbal aggression (direct), attack on a valued object, assault - according to the race of the respondent (lower part of
Patterns of Aggression of Lower-Class Youth
63
Table I. Mean Aggression Scores a on Four Open-Ended Statements, by Class, Race, and Sex b
Boys White
Black
Girls Total
White
Black
Q. 1. "If anyone should stand in Ann's way, she would Class IV V
0.77 (327) 0.88 (242)
0.70 (118) 0.77 (254)
0.74 (445) 0.83 (496)
0.80 (269) 0.79 (264)
0.52 (111) 0.74 (269)
Total ." 0.66 (380) 0.76 (523) Race: p = 0.05
Q.2. "When something gets me real mad, I ... Class IV V
0.75 0.97
0.43 0.57
0.59 0.77
0.73 0.69
0.41 0.51
Race: p = 0.005 Class: p < 0.025 Educational statusC: p < 0.005
0.57 0.60 Race: p = 0.005
Q.3. "If someone tries to push me around, I usually ~ . Class IV V
0.95 0.77 0.94 0.88 Race: p < 0.01
Class IV V
0.79 0.53 0.74 0.65 Race: p < 0.001
0.86 0.92
0.61 0.67
0.64 0.59
0.63 0.63
Q.4. "If someone tries to push me around, I should 0.62 0.70
0.46 0.55
0.39 0.37
0.41 0.46 Race: p
Effects of Class, Race, Sex, and Educational Status on Patterns of Aggression of Lower-Class Youth Elmer Luchterhand 1 and Leonard Weller 2
Received July 24, 1975
The influence o f class, race, sex, and educational status on ways o f handling aggression and temper control were studied by means o f responses to open- and closed-ended questions. The sample consisted o f 1844 inner-city y o u t h in two northern cities. Race was f o u n d to be the only important discriminator." blacks were less aggressive and exhibited more temper control than whites, but once aggression occurred blacks were more likely than whites to assault others.
INTRODUCTION This study, based on the responses o f a random sample o f 1844 y o u t h , ages 13-19, to open- and closed-ended questions, concerns patterns of aggression o f inner-city youth. It examines the influence o f class, race, educational status, and sex on ways o f handling aggression. 3 It was hypothesized that more aggression would be shown (1) by y o u th from the lowest social class than by those from the adjacent social class, (2) by blacks than by whites, (3) by boys than by
1Professor of Sociology, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, New York. Area of specialization is social psychology. Currently working on an interpretation case history of a holocaust episode in a rural German community. 2Associate Professor of Sociology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. Area of specialization is social psychology. In Israel has studied the effects of ethnicity on a number of attitudinal and behavioral variables. 3This was part of a larger study on the attitudes of inner-city youth to many aspects of their lives. Our main concern was the influence of class, race, and educational status on attitudes toward basic human rights and social change, family relationships, patterns of aggression, and intergroup relations. The data on family relationships have been reported elsewhere (Weller and Luchterhand, 1975a,b). All the items relevant to patterns of aggression are reported in this article. 59 9 1976 Plenum Publishing Corporation, 227 West 17th Street, New Y o r k , N.Y. 10011. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, PhOtOCOPying, m i c r o f i l m i n g , recording, or otherwise, w i t h o u t w r i t t e n permission of the publisher.
60
Luchterhand and WeBer
girls. The educational status variable was included because it proved to be an important discriminator in previous work with this sample. Youth from the lowest social class were expected to be the most aggressive for any of the following reasons: (1) They live more stressful lives; (2) they are taught "to strike out with fist or knife and to be certain to hit first" (Davis, 1944, p. 172); (3) aggression is approved and socially rewarded behavior by the culture and peer group (Lesser, 1959). While these same considerations apply to the black, in greater or lesser degree, the black may also introject prejudices of whites, with consequent feelings of low self-esteem and inferiority (Kardiner and Ovesey, 1951; Pettigrew, 1964). Hostile responses are among the ways of reacting to such feelings. On the other hand, fear of reprisals - not felt as acutely by the white - m a y inhibit the black from responding aggressively and may lead instead to extreme passivity and apathy (Karon, 1958). Some research has shown that when provoked the impulse of many blacks is to fight (Goff, 1950; Hindman, 1953), but on the other hand, this impulse is often inhibited (Hindman, 1953; Johnson, 1957; Mussen, 1953). The hypothesis that boys are more aggressive than girls is supported by various studies (e.g., Clark, 1959; Hindman, 1953). Research on aggression involves complex problems of conceptualization. A balanced review of differences in research uses of the concept is not feasible in a brief paper. The present approach may be seen in the scheme in the Appendix for coding different kinds of aggressive and nonaggressive responses. While situational circumstances and attendant feeling states have to be considered in decidingwhether or not "fighting" is aggressive, it is clear that "running away" never is. The nature of the classificatory problems that arise may be indicated generally by the following examples of responses taken from the present inquiry: "getting angry"; asking someone to move out of one's way; getting a third party to act for one in difficulties with a second party; attacking a valued object.
METHOD Population and Sample
The population from which the sample was drawn consisted of all children 13-19 years of age living in the inner city of one major New England city and five selected census tracts of another. 4 The inner-city enumeration classified the young people according to neighborhood (defined by census tracts), race, sex, and age. Since there were more whites than blacks living in the inner city, whites 4The other city served as a control to one of the neighborhoods in the major city. This control is not relevant to the present aspect of the study but had significance for its later phase, whose primary purpose was program evaluation. The data of both cities were virtually identical and consequently were treated together.
Patterns of Aggression of Lower-Class Youth
61
were sampled by a ratio o f 1:4 and blacks were sampled by a ratio o f 1:3. s Because o f residential clustering, the sampling ratios varied b y census tract. The only large ethnic group was the Italians, who accounted for approximately 30% o f the sample. When a respondent could not be r e a c h e d - usually because he had moved - - h e was replaced by another o f the same race, sex, and age, and living in the same census tract. The sample included parochial and public school youths, as well as those out o f school. Individually administered interviews and group-administered questionnaires were given to 2082 youths between the ages o f 13 and 19, 1577 in New Haven and 505 in Bridgeport. The interviewer and interviewee were matched by race and sex. Sample members were in grades 7-12, had graduated from high school, or were school dropouts. In order not to confound age with educational status, 66 youths who were considerably younger or older than their classmates were removed from the sample. The sample was classified by social class, following Hollingshead's two-factor index o f social position. In keeping with this index, the head o f the household's scale value for occupation was weighted b y a factor o f 7 and the scale value for education by a factor of 4. Most o f the y o u t h were in the lowest (class V) or next to the lowest (class IV) social class. The relatively small number o f youths in classes I-III were omitted from the analysis. A three-way analysis o f variance, according to class, race, and educational status, was computed for each sex separately. For educational status, the sample was divided as follows: grades 7-8, grades 9-10, grades 11-12, high school graduates, and dropouts.
Measurements
Two o f the four items measuring ways o f handling aggression were sentence completion statements: 1. If anyone should stand in Ann's way, she would 2. When something gets me real mad, I_ . The answers to these two questions were coded and scored as follows: nonaggressive responses were scored 0; aggressive responses, excluding "assault on a person," were scored 1; physical assault responses were scored 2. The last category, "physical assault," was given a special weighting because o f the se5Because no enumeration was available in the other city which served as a control, two procedures were relied on to construct the census. For in-school youth the census was based on the school registration records of the seven public schools. From these records a sample was drawn, one in three for blacks and one in four for whites. To obtain a list of out-of-school youth, a sample of one in three dwellings was drawn from the city directory. The people in this sample - canvassed by telephone and in person - were asked to name all 13- to 19-year-olds living in the household. After excluding those already listed by the schools, a sample of out-of-school youth was drawn.
62
Luchtethand and WeBer
riousness of the behavior involved. In this analysis the kinds of nonaggressive responses (categories l, 2, and 3 in the Appendix) and the kinds of aggressive responses (categories 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 in the Appendix) were not considered separately. Two other questions were asked, but in this case the response categories were indicated: 3. If someone tries to push me around, I usually __ fight him. __ tell him off, but fight if pushed enough. __ tell him off or argue with him. leave or do nothing about it. _ _ just tell others what kind of a guy he is. 4. If someone tries to push me around, I should fight him. tell him off, but fight if pushed enough. __ tell him off or argue with him. leave or do nothing about. _ _ . just tell others what kind o f a guy he is.
RESULTS
The means for each item presented separately for boys and girls, and grouped by class and race, are presented in Table I. (Since, except for question 2, educational status was not significant, the means for the varying levels of education are not shown.) The p values for each comparison are also reported in the table. It is evident that race is the single most important factor for both boys and girls. Significant differences were found in three o f the four items. In aU cases,
whites responded more aggressively than blacks. For item 2 only, there were two other significant differences: class V boys responded more aggressively than class IV boys, and younger boys responded more aggressively than older boys. Because sex was not included as a n independent variable in the statistical design, tests o f significance could not be computed. Nevertheless, the boys' scores were compared to those of girls for each class and race combination. In each comparison, the boys were found to be more aggressive than the girls. The only exception was found in item 1, where class IV white girls were more aggressive than class IV white boys. To determine whether there are differences in the type of aggressive response according to race, we cross-classified the five kinds of aggressive responses -nonspecific aggression, indirect aggression, verbal aggression (direct), attack on a valued object, assault - according to the race of the respondent (lower part of
Patterns of Aggression of Lower-Class Youth
63
Table I. Mean Aggression Scores a on Four Open-Ended Statements, by Class, Race, and Sex b
Boys White
Black
Girls Total
White
Black
Q. 1. "If anyone should stand in Ann's way, she would Class IV V
0.77 (327) 0.88 (242)
0.70 (118) 0.77 (254)
0.74 (445) 0.83 (496)
0.80 (269) 0.79 (264)
0.52 (111) 0.74 (269)
Total ." 0.66 (380) 0.76 (523) Race: p = 0.05
Q.2. "When something gets me real mad, I ... Class IV V
0.75 0.97
0.43 0.57
0.59 0.77
0.73 0.69
0.41 0.51
Race: p = 0.005 Class: p < 0.025 Educational statusC: p < 0.005
0.57 0.60 Race: p = 0.005
Q.3. "If someone tries to push me around, I usually ~ . Class IV V
0.95 0.77 0.94 0.88 Race: p < 0.01
Class IV V
0.79 0.53 0.74 0.65 Race: p < 0.001
0.86 0.92
0.61 0.67
0.64 0.59
0.63 0.63
Q.4. "If someone tries to push me around, I should 0.62 0.70
0.46 0.55
0.39 0.37
0.41 0.46 Race: p
