ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how emerging adults reflect on their use of verbally aggressive messages as a way to communicatively bully their siblings during childhood. Participants include 124 undergraduate students enrolled at a large mid-Atlantic university. Although emerging adults recall that they either rarely or never at all used verbally aggressive messages with their siblings during childhood (both generally and as a way to specifically bully their siblings), emerging adults who were high in trait verbal aggressiveness reported using 22 of the 28 verbally aggressive messages more frequently to bully a sibling during childhood than emerging adults who were low in trait verbal aggressiveness. They also consider their use of 5 of the 28 verbally aggressive messages with a sibling during childhood as more justified and rate their use of 7 of the 28 verbally aggressive messages as less hurtful.
