Sociale Dominantie en Sociale Vaardigheden van Resource Control Typen

Abstract

The present study focused on social dominance based on the Resource Control Theory (RCT). Adolescents in the first class of secondary school have to gain new social positions in the group, which might cause competition in obtaining social dominance. According to the studies of Hawley two different strategies, coercive and prosocial, are used to gain this social dominance. Based on these strategies, adolescents can be divided into five resource control subtypes: prosocial controllers, coercive controllers, bistrategics, noncontrollers and typicals. Data are derived from the program Dynamics of Youth of Utrecht University. In present study 619 adolescents (Mage = 12 years and 1 month, SD = 5.48 months) have participated. First, differences in resource control between the types were verified. The differences between the five types correspond to earlier research, namely that bistrategics gain the most resource control and noncontrollers the least. Subsequently, this study focused on social skills of the resource control types. Prosocial controllers scored the highest on social skills, whereas coercive controllers scored the lowest. Together, these findings suggest that both coercive and prosocial strategies can lead to social dominance. Whereas prosocial strategies are connected to the highest social skills, coercive strategies are connected to the lowest.