An examination of the relationship between and intervention with emotional competences and violence. The role of anxiety

Abstract

School violence has received increased interest from researchers during the last decades. According to the literature, violence in schools is related to various negative outcomes, such as a negative climate, decreased well-being of the students, or bad academic performance. Numerous studies have tried to detangle the underlying variables that can improve coexistence and prevent peer aggression and violence. Emotional competencies seem to constitute an interesting factor in this deed, increasing well-being and positive coexistence in class. The present study aims at analyzing the role of emotional competencies when preventing violence, as well as the role that anxiety plays in this relationship. The sample was constituted of 767 Spanish primary school students of 4th, 5th, and 6th grade from various public and private centers of a few northen Spain cities. Variables of emotional competencies, anxiety, and violence were gathered with self-informed questionnaires (CDE 9-13, STAI and CUVE-R). A pre-post design with experimental and control group was carried out. Results show that, as it was expected, emotional competences are inversely correlated to violence. Also, anxiety plays an important role in the relationship between both factors, although no full mediation was found. Several interaction effects between pre and post evaluation were found in different variables, such as emotional awareness, social competences, life and well-being competences and the global score of emotional competences. According to our results, students decreased their anxiety levels after intervention, in a significant way. Also, it was observed that higher levels of emotional competencies are directly related to lower levels of violence in post evaluation. All in all, interventions, like the one described in the present article, may be beneficial and show that the improvement of the management of emotions may be a good solution to prevent violent behaviors in school.