Verschillen tussen de vijf resource control groepen van Hawley met betrekking tot sociale competentie bij brugklassers

Abstract

Dominance can be seen as an important element within social relationships. Dominance is, within social sciences, increasingly defined in terms of resource control. Resource control can be defined as obtaining objects, privileges, attention and respect from other people. According to Hawley’s resource control theory, dominance can be maintained in either an aggressive way (coërcive) or a prosocial way (coöperative). Hawley distinguishes between 5 resource control groups: bi-strategics, prosocial controllers, coërcive controllers, non-controllers and typicals. The present study aimed to investigate the differences between the 5 resource control groups among seventh graders. Nowadays, social competence is viewed as a balance between dominance and having good relationships with other people. 2413 seventh graders participated in the present study, all with a Dutch nationality. Dependent variables were resource control (measured by peer nominations), social competence (measured by self report) and likeability (measured by peer nominations). Main results provide evidence that, compared to the other resource control groups, bi-strategics score significantly higher. Also, they score significantly higher on the dependent variable self-perceived social competence than typicals and they score significantly lower on the dependent variable likeability than the other resource control groups. However, non-controllers, who tend to be loved by their own group members, score significantly low on resource control compared to the other groups. Furthermore, no significant differences between prosocial controllers and typicals have been found. Implications for future research are discussed.