Impact of group storytelling intervention on young schoolchildren’s aggression: a focus group analysis

This study represents a pioneering investigation of the impact of a storytelling group intervention to reduce reactive and proactive aggression among young schoolchildren based on the social information processing model. The participants were 4,086 students in grades 1 – 4 from 15 randomly selected elementary schools in Hong Kong. Using the Reactive–Proactive Aggression Questionnaire, we identified 371 students at risk of reactive, proactive, and reactive-proactive aggression and randomly assigned them to the experimental, placebo, and control groups via urn randomization. Two hundred and three schoolchildren were randomly selected to participate in the focus groups at three different stages: before the intervention, immediately after, and 6 months later. The data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. We found that the intervention could reduce reactive aggression by enhancing anger coping strategies and forgiveness and reducing hostile attributional bias at the last two stages. However, the intervention’s impact on empathy among proactive aggressors diminished at the follow-up stage. This highlights the need for extended and sustained affective empathy training to effectively mitigate proactive aggression since developing and applying empathy in peer relationships requires more time, particularly for children exhibiting narcissistic traits associated with proactive aggression. The study has several limitations, including limited cultural generalizability, reliance on single informants, narrow focus group methods, potential social desirability bias, unequal gender sample sizes, and insufficient intervention duration. Nonetheless, this study sheds light on policies and practices related to addressing school bullying. Policymakers could implement anti-bullying training programs to increase teachers’ awareness and responsiveness to bullying incidents. Additionally, teachers and counselors can leverage storytelling as a tool to foster social-emotional skills among children at high risk for aggression, particularly through extracurricular activities. Moreover, the integration of storytelling into daily routines may enable caregivers to strengthen attachment with their children, helping them process bullying experiences and mitigate bullying behaviors. Overall, this study contributes to the growing body of research on aggression interventions by emphasizing the distinct needs of reactive and proactive aggressors.