Adolescents' Parental Rejection Perceptions and The Attachment Styles as a Parameter of Tendency to Violence

The aim of the study is to gain an understanding of the quality of parent-child attachment relationship on the tendency to violence on high school adolescents with disciplinary penalties due to violence in Turkey. The sample group was composed of 145 volunteer adolescents aged 14-18 years from 8 different high schools in Istanbul. There are 43 adolescents who receive disciplinary penalties by the disciplinary boards of their schools for physical and verbal violence and 102 adolescents who not receive disciplinary penalties at all. Parental Acceptance /Rejection Scale, Violence Tendency Scale, Inventory of Experiences in Close Relationships and Personal Information Form were used to the collect the data. Results indicated that the perception of neglect/ indifference which adolescents with disciplinary penalties receive from, only, their mothers has been found higher. There is a negative correlation between the avoidant attachment and the feeling of harming others in relation to adolescents' patterns of violence and attachment patterns. In addition, adolescents' feelings of warmth/ affection perceived from their mothers and fathers reduce anxious attachment while feelings of indifference/ neglect of adolescents increase the anxious attachment. The results emphasized the importance of perceived parental rejection and attachment style established in childhood on the tendency to violence in adolescence.