Adolescents’ appraisal of responses to problem situations and their relation to aggression and nonviolent behavior.

Abstract

This study investigated adolescents' appraisals of responses to problematic situations and their relations to behavioral intentions for aggressive and nonviolent behavior. A key question was whether ratings of effective and ineffective nonviolent responses and aggressive responses reflect distinct constructs or opposite ends of a single dimension. Method: A sample of 183 students at 3 middle schools in an urban public school system serving a mostly African American population completed measures of aggression and rated responses to hypothetical situations on 5 dimensions: behavioral intention, effectiveness, descriptive norms, and anticipated reactions from friends and parents. Responses included nonviolent responses and aggressive responses to problematic situations identified in previous qualitative studies. Nonviolent responses were categorized as effective or ineffective based on ratings by a community sample of youth and adults. Results: Confirmatory factor analyses supported separate factors representing ratings of effective responses and aggressive responses for each domain. Regression analyses indicated that ratings of aggressive responses were more strongly related to aggressive intentions, and ratings of effective responses were more strongly related to intentions to use effective responses. Adolescents who varied in their level of aggression differed in their ratings of aggressive and nonviolent responses. Those reporting higher levels of aggression showed less differentiation between effective and ineffective nonviolent responses compared with those reporting lower levels. Conclusions: These findings underscore the need for further efforts to identify factors that promote effective nonviolent behavior versus those that support aggression. They have important implications for the development of violence prevention programs.

Beliefs About Fighting and Their Relations to Urban Adolescents’ Frequency of Aggression and Victimization: Evaluation of the Beliefs About Fighting Scale

“…We used the Effective Nonviolent Intentions Scale from the Perceptions of Responses to Problem Situations Scale (Farrell & Bettencourt, 2018) to assess participants’ propensity to use nonviolent responses in peer conflict situations. The scale describes six problem situations, each of which is followed by an aggressive and a nonaggressive response.…”

Взаимосвязь Психологического Капитала И Выбора Студентами Позиций Взаимодействия И Стратегий Самоутверждения

“…Modern research shows that the range of factors that determine the choice of nonviolence is diverse and wide. Firstly, this is due to the child's assimilation of the concept of nonviolence as a universal value, which is carried out in early childhood, where parents' "messages" about the permissibility or inadmissibility of violence play an important role (Farrell & Bettencourt, 2020). Secondly, the choice of nonviolence may be associated with an individual combination of neuropsychological, motivational and personal qualities of a particular individual, his irrational beliefs (Maralov, Sitarov, 2021;.…”