This study examined the use of teasing during observed videotaped interactions of Mexican American adolescent dating couples ( N = 34; 15–17 years old) from an urban area of the Southwest United States. During the interaction task, couples discussed two relationship problems for 14 min and nearly all interactions (88.2%) contained teasing. In turn, we developed a grounded theory of teasing that delineated who initiated the teasing (boys/girls), teasing types, levels of severity of teasing incidents, youth’s motivations for teasing, and the resulting consequences of teasing in real time. We found that most teasing incidents were mild to moderately severe and that girls initiated teasing to a greater extent than boys. Regarding motives, youth used teasing to exert power during the interaction and/or to repair a problem in the relationship. Despite various types of teasing, the resulting consequences were hurt feelings, power struggles, and shame. Participants overtly stated that they desired improved communication. We recommend that socioemotional learning and dating violence prevention programs include teasing as part of conflict resolution skill sets and that these programs be informed by the cultural values of Mexican-origin youth.

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什么时候是戏弄虐待？墨西哥裔美国青少年约会情侣之间取笑的扎根理论


本研究检查了来自美国西南部城市地区的墨西哥裔美国青少年约会情侣（N = 34;15-17 岁）在观察的录像互动中对戏弄的使用。在互动任务中，夫妻讨论了两个关系问题 14 min，几乎所有互动 （88.2%） 都包含戏弄。反过来，我们发展了一个扎根的戏弄理论，该理论描述了谁发起了戏弄（男孩/女孩）、戏弄类型、戏弄事件的严重性、青少年的戏弄动机以及实时戏弄的后果。我们发现，大多数戏弄事件是轻度到中度严重的，并且女孩比男孩更频繁地发起戏弄。关于动机，青少年使用戏弄在互动过程中施加力量和/或修复关系中的问题。尽管有各种类型的戏弄，但由此产生的后果是感情受伤、权力斗争和羞耻。参与者公开表示他们希望改善沟通。我们建议社会情感学习和约会暴力预防计划将戏弄作为冲突解决技能的一部分，并且这些计划应以墨西哥裔青年的文化价值观为依据。