4 Troubled Teens Blog

Teenagers who resort to violence may be seeking respect and appreciation among their peer groups, according to a new study from Spain.

• Dr. David Ruiz and his colleagues studied 1320 teenagers in Valencia, Spain.
  
• One of their main findings was that if teens experience lowered social status and social rejection, they suffer loneliness, low self-esteem, and lowered satisfaction with their lives.
  
• This results in many teenagers using relational violence to gain acceptance.
  
• Relational violence is defined as behavior designed to provoke harm within another person's circle of friends or damage their perception of belonging to a group.

"Having high self-esteem is a key aspect because this is important in inhibiting teenagers from indulging in behavior that involves relational violence between peers at school," the author wrote in the study, which was published in the journal Psicothema.

Labels: violence, research, motivation

Posted By: Aspen/CRC