The interrelationship between childhood emotional abuse and aggressive behavior in the Chinese adolescent population: a network perspective

Abstract

Background: Numerous studies have found a strong correlation between emotional abuse in childhood and aggressive behavior in adolescents, especially among rural youth. However, the complex relationship between the different sub-dimensions of aggression and emotional abuse is unclear. This study aimed to explore the association between emotional abuse and different dimensions of aggressive behavior in rural adolescents using network analysis.

Methods: The participants in this study came from multiple middle schools and a total of 1797 adolescents were included in the study. Questionnaires were self-reported using the CTQ-SF (Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form) scale and Buss and Warren aggression questionnaire. A network analysis was performed.

Results: The network analysis revealed that hostility and anger were the most central dimensions of aggression, with " Sometimes I feel like people are laughing at me behind my back " and " I have a hard time controlling my temper " being the most influential nodes. Emotional abuse symptoms, particularly “Someone in my family has said insulting or sad things to me,” served as critical bridge symptoms, linking emotional abuse to aggressive behavior. Gender differences were significant, with males exhibiting stronger associations between emotional abuse and physical aggression, while females showed stronger links between emotional abuse and internalizing symptoms like hostility and anger.

Conclusion: This study highlights the central role of hostility and anger in the relationship between emotional abuse and aggressive behavior among rural adolescents. Poor family relationships, particularly insulting or demeaning remarks from family members, were identified as key bridge symptoms that exacerbate aggressive tendencies. Gender-specific patterns suggest that interventions should be tailored to address physical aggression in males and internalizing symptoms in females.

Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13034-025-00931-3.

Keywords: Aggressive behavior; Emotional abuse; Network analysis; Rural adolescents.

Fig. 1

The network structure of emotional abuse-aggressive behaviors in rural adolescence. EMO: Emotional abuse; PHY: Physical Aggression; VER: Verbal Aggression; IND: Indirect Aggression; ANG: Anger HOS: Hostility; The symptoms represented by each node abbreviation refer to Supplementary Table 1

Fig. 2

Flow network of “Sometimes I feel like people are laughing at me behind my back”

Fig. 3

The Stability of centrality indices by case-dropping bootstrap. Note: The stability of strength and bridge strength using case-dropping bootstrap. The x-axis indicates the percentage of cases of the original sample included at each step. The y-axis indicates the average correlations between the centrality indices from the original network and the centrality indices from the networks that were re-estimated after excluding increasing percentages of cases. Each line indicates the correlations of strength and bridge strength, while areas indicate 95% CI

Fig. 4

Central symptoms of network structure in different gender populations. Note: Fig. 4.A is the order of node strength in the male network structure, and Fig. 4.B is the female network structure

Fig. 5

Parts of the network structure that differ between male and female. Note: The green line represents a significantly higher correlation between these two behaviors for males than for females, and the red line represents the opposite