Abstract:

The quality of the interpersonal relationships that are established during the life is an important factor of psychological and social adjustment, indispensable for the human development. As adolescents dissociate themselves from their parents (although the family continues to occupy an important place) peer relationships increase, gain importance, and become the most influential context in terms of socialization. The school is one of the main structured scenarios to promote the personal development of each student, their capacities, learning and quality interactions with their colleagues. If school and peer acceptance are of great significance to adolescents, then not liking it or being rejected by peers can also lead to difficulties of social and emotional adjustment. Aggressive behaviors among peers are presented as the main problem of interpersonal relationships in schools. They are also frequently observed in school violent behaviors and situations of indiscipline, but bullying differs from these by highlighting an intentionality in aggression, the regularity with which they occur (no matter what happens: direct / physical aggression or verbal or indirect / aggression Relational) and power imbalance among the participants. In this sense, this study intends to understand how the aggressive behaviors among peers, relate to the emotional and social skills of the students involved.

To this end, a questionnaire survey was carried out through the Interpersonal Behavior Scale in School Context (ECICE) and the Bar-On Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (EQ-i: YV), applied to 297 Portuguese students of a public school in District of Évora - Portugal.

The results show the existence of negative relations between the behaviors of bullying and the emotional and social competences. It was also possible to verify statistically significant differences in bullying situations and emotional and social competences, as a function of sociodemographic variables and school characterization. It is evidenced the importance of the education of emotional and social competences for the promotion of interpersonal quality relationships in a school context.

Keywords:

Behavioral Interactions, Bullying, Emotional and social skills, Emotional intelligence.