This study examined how sociomoral judgments and other evaluations of aggression related to potentially aggressogenic social-cognitive factors and patterns of conduct problem behaviors. Participating were 124 ninth graders in the seventh, eighth, or ninth year of a developmental research project on social competence. Subjects were assessed across social cognitive dimensions after imagining themselves involved in interactions portrayed in six videotaped vignettes. Subjects responded to vignette-based questions representing sociomoral judgments and multiple components of social information processing. The findings indicated that: (1) sociomoral judgments about possible aggressive responses across varied social contexts consistently predicted externalizing problems; and (2) sociomoral judgments about aggression mediated the relation between hostile attributional style and externalizing behavior. The findings suggest that sociomoral judgments about aggression play a crucial role in the tendency to react aggressively. (Contains 77 references.) (Author/KB)