Emotion Dysregulation as a Mechanism Linking Stress Exposure to Adolescent Aggressive Behavior

Exposure to stress is associated with a wide range of internalizing and externalizing problems in adolescents, including aggressive
behavior. Extant research examining mechanisms underlying the associations between stress and youth aggression has consistently
identified social information processing pathways that are disrupted by exposure to violence and increase risk of aggressive
behavior. In the current study, we use longitudinal data to examine emotion dysregulation as a potential mechanism linking
a broader range of stressful experiences to aggressive behavior in a diverse sample of early adolescents (N = 1065). Specifically, we examined the longitudinal associations of peer victimization and stressful life events with emotion
dysregulation and aggressive behavior. Structural equation modeling was used to create latent constructs of emotion dysregulation
and aggression. Both stressful life events and peer victimization predicted subsequent increases in emotion dysregulation
over a 4-month period. These increases in emotion dysregulation, in turn, were associated with increases in aggression over
the subsequent 3 months. Longitudinal mediation models showed that emotion dysregulation mediated the relationship of both
peer victimization (z = 2.35, p = 0.019) and stressful life events (z = 2.32, p = 0.020) with aggressive behavior. Increasing the use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies is an important target for
interventions aimed at preventing the onset of adolescent aggressive behavior.