Acceptance and social influence between equals in primary education children. Implications of linguistic and persuasion skills.

Abstract

Persuasion is a speech act that consists in using language to get the persuaded to adopt a belief or attitude that leads him to perform some action, for his own benefit (selfish persuasion) or the persuaded (prosocial). Thus, persuasive skills place children in different positions of acceptance and social influence among peers. Objetives. Analyze the prosocial and selfish persuasive ability (variety, quality and valence of the arguments) in primary school children; and its relationship with linguistic competence and acceptance and social influence among peers. Method. A sociometric questionnaire, the PPVT-III test and two tasks of persuasive production (selfish and prosocial) were administered to 103 children aged 6 to 12 years. Results. Linguistic competence favors the quality of persuasive arguments (not their variety or valence), both in prosocial and selfish persuasion; and the ability to selfishly convince others to do something is related to greater acceptance and social influence. Conclusions. The results provide clues to the design of educational activities through which school children experience the effects of prosocial persuasion, to be included in education plans for coexistence.

Keywords

• persuasión
• lenguaje
• aceptación entre iguales
• educación primaria