Columbine prevention: in search for a risk group

Elzesser A. S., Kapustina T. V., Kadyrov R. V., Mutalimova A. M., Maleeva S. Y., Tkach E. N.

Extremism and its prevention among young people is one of the most important problems of modern psychology. At a time when a lot of research is devoted to this problem abroad, they were practically not conducted in Russia. The purpose of this study is to psychologically describe a group of schoolchildren with a pronounced vulnerability to involvement in the youth movement "Columbine". The research methods are a screening method for diagnosing a tendency to extremism (and identifying a risk group), R. Cattell's Factor Personality Questionnaire, 16 PF, Form A, Temperament Property Accentuation Test (TAST), V.V. Plotnikov and co-authors, Cook-Medley Hostility Scale (CMHS), a projective technique of 12 Archetypes plus (12A+), G. Eysenck's personality questionnaire EPI with subsequent statistical processing of numerical data that made it possible to describe the psychological portrait of a group of schoolchildren with pronounced vulnerability to involvement in the youth movement "Columbine": closed, critical of others, prone to making superficial generalizations, with high lability of mood, the predominance of a gloomy and depressed emotional background, accustomed to cynicism, closed from others, experiencing loneliness, showing excessive demands on others and on themselves. At the same time, unfavorable conditions of social maladaptation can lead these students to choose antisocial destructive extremist groups, participation in which allows realizing the highly significant value of belonging to something.

Keywords:columbine, extremist tendencies, propensity to extremism, maladaptive behavior