Figure 2.

A three-wave mediation model showing the standardized path coefficients for relating exposure to ethnic–political violence and overall aggressive behavior in Wave 1 to three hypothesized mediating variables assessed in Wave 2 and from them to aggressive behavior in Wave 3 controlling for participant’s gender, family socioeconomic status, and the Wave 1 values of the hypothesized mediators. The parameters are estimated for the sample of 1,501 participants using full information maximum likelihood. Estimating the model with ethnic group as a subgroup moderator resulted in a worse fitting model (Akaike information criterion 459.1) as did estimating the model with age as a subgroup moderator (Akaike information criterion = 459.2). The three mediated paths are all significant according to the displayed Sobel test for mediation and according to a bootstrapping analysis that also showed mediation by normative beliefs was stronger than mediation by aggressive fantasizing.