Relations between sexist attitudes, family communication and agresion towards equals.

Bullying is a problem with serious psychosocial consequences. In addition, it occurs in a stage of the life cycle in which the family and sexist attitudes have some influence on the violent behavior of adolescents. From this perspective, the objective of this paper was to analyze possible differences in hostile sexism, benevolent sexism, communication with the mother and communication with the father among three groups of adolescents established according to their different involvement in violence towards peers: “low involvement”, “occasional involvement” and “frequent involvement”. The sample consisted of 1034 adolescents (50.6% boys and 49.4% girls), between 12 and 18 years old. The results show that adolescents with a frequent involvement in bullying have more benevolent and hostile sexist attitudes and more communication problems with both parents. Likewise, those involved in frequent and occasional aggressive behaviors show less open communication with the mother and with the father. The results show the need to help adolescents who exercise frequent aggression and indicate the importance of including these variables in prevention programs