The relationships between aggressiveness, peer pressure and parental attitudes among Turkish high school students

Abstract

The relationships between aggressive behaviors, peer pressure, parental attitudes, and gender among 202 students from different public high schools were investigated in this study. Three scales were employed. Following the calculation of the correlation coefficients among the scores, a significant and positive relationship between the aggressiveness scores and the peer pressure, authoritarian and protective parental attitudes scores, and a significant and negative relationship between the aggressiveness scores and the democratic parental attitudes scores were found. Regression analysis was employed to see if the variables of peer pressure and parental attitudes predict the aggressiveness scores, and indicated that democratic parental attitudes, peer pressure and protective parental attitudes are the predictors of aggressiveness. Furthermore, the difference between the female and male students' aggressiveness score means was tested by using t test, and it was established that male students were more aggressive than were female students.