SANCHES, Cristina    GOUVEIA-PEREIRA, Maria. Julgamentos de justiça em contexto escolar e comportamentos desviantes na adolescência. []. , 28, 1, pp.71-84. ISSN 0870-8231.

Research in the justice field, namely in the field of the Relational Model of Authority (Tyler & Lind, 1992) have showed that the more people perceive authorities as fair, the more they legitimate those authorities and adopt pro-active behaviours towards the group. In this research our hypothesis is that adolescents’ perceptions of injustice about school authority are related with deviant behaviors in adolescence. We also analyze the mediation of the evaluation of institutional authorities in the relationship between justice perceptions and deviant behavior. Participants were 331 adolescents, aged between 12 and 18 years old. Results showed that as the adolescents’ justice judgments about teachers increase (in what regards the procedures used and the relationship’s quality), their involvement in deviant acts decreases. This relationship was mediated by the evaluation of institutional authority and it was significant even after controlling the effect of age and gender. These results indicate that adolescents’ perception of their relationship with school authorities is a key factor for understanding deviance, and that judgments about procedural and relational justice have an important role in the development of that relationship.

: Adolescence; Deviant behaviours; Justice of judgments.

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