Instrumental aggression and moral feelings

Abstract

ABSTRACT

The aim of this research is to study the relation between instrumental aggression and the existence of moral feelings in adolescents in the first cycle of Compulsory Secondary Education. The analysis of violence from a functional approach involves distinguishing between instrumental violence, which is exercised as a means of achieving some sort of personal, social or material goal and reactive violence, considered as a defensive response to a real o supposed aggression. Within the moral feelings that have been selected for this research we distinguish between those considered as positive feelings, empathy and pride, and those that have been valuated as negative feelings, such as guilt. The instrument of evaluation used for this purpose has been the "Questionnaire on Reactive and Instrumental violence in relation to self-control in teenagers". Results relevant to the analysis of the two variables studied in this article have been selected. The questionnaire was administered to 771 students of the first cycle of Compulsory Secondary Education belonging to five state schools of the region of Madrid. The descriptive analysis of results has revealed not only the inverse relation between the two concepts studied, instrumental violence and moral feelings but also the importance of these feelings as protective factors regarding the manifestations of instrumental violence.