Adolescent’s socio-cognitive representations (images) of different social groups

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the results of the study, which was aimed at the research of adolescent’s socio-cognitive representations (images) of social groups (parents, classmates, teachers, policemen, public officials). 7000 high-school students from different cities and villages of Russia took part at the research. Age: 14—18. Deviant adolescent’s socio-cognitive representations (images) are also studied. The sample of deviant adolescents — 127 participants. Method: «80 adjectives» (by A. Rean) technique was used. Сontingency table method was used for the evaluation of correlation between adjective choice preferences and the participant’s group. χ-square test was used for statistical significance evaluation. The major findings are: adolescents use mostly positive adjectives for description of parents, mostly negative descriptors for policemen and public offocials, both for classmates and teachers. Descriptor-choice preferences are found among different groups of participants.