The role of teasing in development and vice versa.

This study was undertaken because there are almost no reports in the scientific literature on the subject of teasing. Teasing changes as it expresses developmental issues from playing peek-a-boo in infancy to expressing personal issues, such as boy/girl relationships, in adolescence. The form also changes as the cognitive capacity of the child changes. Two hundred fifty children from 1st, 3rd, 6th, 8th, and 11th grades were asked to describe teasing, its motive, and the reaction of the victim. The form of teasing was organized into hurtful (hitting or spitting), mean (calling a burn victim ugly) and symbolic, which allows the victim to realize that the provocation is "just words." The forms correlated with age and suggest that progression through these forms can be understood in terms of the theories of psychological stages drawn from Piagetian and psycholinguistic studies. The dominant motivation for the child doing the teasing seemed at every age to be sadistic pleasure in the discomfort of the child being teased, although one sees some playful, benign teasing by late adolescence.