title: Children's reasons for living, self-esteem, and violence.
abstract: Attitudes toward violence and reasons for living in young adolescents with high, moderate, and low self-esteem were examined. The authors devised an Attitudes Toward Violence questionnaire; the Rosenberg's Self-esteem Scale (RSE) and the Brief Reasons for Living in Adolescents (BRFL-A) was used to assess adaptive characteristics. The independent variables were gender and self-esteem. The dependent variables were total Reasons for Living score and Attitudes Toward Violence score. Participants included 138 boys and 95 girls, ages 11 to 15 years (M = 13.3) from a city middle school. The results showed that for the dependent variable attitudes toward violence, main effects were found for both gender and self-esteem. For the dependent variable reasons for living, a main effect was found for self-esteem but not for gender. An inverse relationship was found between violence and reasons for living. Being male and low self-esteem emerged as predictors of more accepting attitudes toward violence. Low self-esteem was significantly related to fewer reasons for living.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Mississippi, Mississippi, USA.
authors.forename: Rhonda M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Merwin
authors.forename: Jon B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Ellis