Social skills and violence behavior in young people who lived or not with dogs during childhood
Abstract
In this study, we analyze the impact of living with a dog during childhood in relation to the social skills and violent behavior during youth. To do it, 112 young people of both sexes, between 15 and 25 years old, participated; 57 of them had lived with a dog at home for at least 5 years when they were between 2 and 13 years old. While the remaining 55 had never had a dog at home. The evaluation was performed using the multidimensional scale of social expression-motor part (EMES-M) (Caballo, 1987) and the Aggression Questionnaire (AQ) (Buss & Perry, 1992). The comparison of the groups showed that young people who had never had a dog scored higher on the scale of violent behavior. We did not found significant differences in social skills; although the results indicate that those young people who had lived with a dog for more years, had more social skills. We conclude that the presence of a dog at home can positively affect the environment in which children and ado-lescents grow up.
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