Adolescents' Attitudes to Bullying and its Relationship to Perceived Family Social Climate.

Abstract

Adolescent attitudes towards bullying are determined by the interaction between individual characteristics and psychosocial development contexts such as the family environment. Our objective was to perform a psychosocial analysis of the differences in reported attitudes towards school bullying between peers according to a series of indicators of family social climate, such as perceived parental support and understanding, punishment and rejection, and disapproval. 665 students (50.4% girls) aged 12-18 (M = 14.59, SD = 1.691) from Asturias (Spain) participated in the study. Participants were selected by intentional sampling with simple random two-stage subsampling of secondary-school groups. The hypothesized positive relationship between the perception of parental support and increased resistance attitudes towards school bullying in the three attitudinal dimensions explored (cognitive, affective, and behavioural) was supported by our results. Notably, favourable attitudes towards bullying were associated to negative family climate perceptions. Adolescents with permissive attitudes towards bullying reported higher use of physical and psychological violence, as well as corporal punishment by their parents. This study supports the importancer of family socialization practices in the construction of attitudes towards bullying.