The Relationships among Interparental Conflict, Peer, Media Effects and the Violence Behaviour of Adolescents: The Mediator Role of Attitudes towards Violence

Abstract

Violence behavior in adolescents is a fundamental problem commonly encountered in today's world. When the literature is reviewed, it is seen that there is a great amount of research conducted on the issue. Kepenkçi and Çınkır (2005) reported that 35.5% of the high school students in Turkey resort to violence at least once in a school year. Alikasifoğlu, Ercan, Erginöz, Uysal, and Kaymak Deniz (2004) conducted a study in Istanbul to investigate the prevalence of displaying violence behavior among high school students and they reported that 42% (n=1720) of the students were involved in at least one fight in previous year. Different from developmental features of children and * The present study is generated from the doctoral dissertation of the correspondence author and supported by the Research Found of Çukurova University (Project No: EF2009D9).

Mediated and moderated effects of violent media consumption on youth violence

“…The size of the effects of violent media consumption on violence-approving normative beliefs is moderate to large and is thus in line with existing results. The effect sizes found by Avci and Güçray (2013) and Möller (2006) in cross-sectional analyses are almost exactly as high as the ones here ( β = .4 for violent media consumption including violent film consumption and β = .24 for violent video game consumption on violence-approving normative beliefs, respectively), but the size of the longitudinal effect of violent video game consumption on violence-approving normative beliefs ( β = .18) found by Gentile et al (2014) is larger than the one found in this study, 23 although still comparable to the one found for violent film consumption.…”

“…Browne and Pennell’s (1998) experiment yielded support for a mediation of the effects of violent media consumption via violence-approving normative beliefs on violent behaviour. Cross-sectional studies established support for the supposed mediation as well: Gentile et al (2004) tested mediation via ‘hostility’ as assumed in the General Aggression Model, and Avci and Güçray (2013) found a complete mediation of the effects of violent media consumption on physical violence (measured with the Buss Perry Aggression Questionnaire) via attitudes towards violence. Finally, two longitudinal studies analysed the mediator role of violence-approving normative beliefs in explaining the effects of violent media consumption.…”

Validity and Reliability of the Reactive-Proactive Aggression Questionnaire in Turkish Adolescents

“…Considering that peer with guilt and aggression behavior might be taken as a model (Warr, 1996) or that peers might reinforce their aggression behaviors either directly or indirectly, peer guilt can be expected to be associated with both reactive and proactive aggression. Avcı and Güçray (2013) opine that there is a relationship between having a positive attitude towards violence and demonstrating aggression in adolescents. In this study, a positive relation was determined between attitudes towards violence, and reactive and proactive aggression dimensions of RPQ.…”

Students’ Evaluations about Prosocial and Violent Behaviour and Attitudes

“…Strong correlations between positive attitudes towards violence and aggressive (verbal, physical and relational) behaviour exist among boys and girls in adolescence (Vernberg, Jacops, Hershberger, 1999). Research (Gellman, Delucia-Waack, 2006) among perpetrators of school violence and nonviolent control participants have demonstrated a positive relationship between adolescents' attitudes toward violence and the use of violence, whereby it was found that attitudes towards violence had partial mediator role in the relationship between media-peer effects and physical violence among adolescents (Avci, Gucray, 2013). At the other side, prosocial adolescents were more prone to endorse prosocial values and mores (Carlo et al, 2003; 2011; Johnston, Krettenauer, 2011; Padilla-Walker, ; and more sophisticated levels of prosocial moral reasoning have been shown to predict higher levels of prosocial and lower levels of aggressive behaviour among adolescents (Carlo et al, 1996;Eisenberg et al, 1995;Wyatt, Carlo, 2002), whereby this is consistent with results among delinquents showing lower scores on moral reasoning than non-delinquents (Stams et al, 2006).…”