Bullying 1 Flashcards
Definition of bullying
Strategic aggressive behaviour that the perpetrator repeatedly inflicts on a victim with the intention to cause harm, and occurring within a relationship in which there is an imbalance of power.
key words- strategic, repeatedly, intention, imbalance
conflict vs bullying
Conflict:
- A disagreement or difference of opinion
- An inevitable part of group dynamics
- Equal power between those involved
- Usually an isolated incident/ occasional
- all involved make an effort to resolve the situation
Bullying:
- Based on imbalance of power
- The intent to harm- on purpose
- Happens repeatedly
- Serious- causes physical of emotional harm
- does not stop when asked
- should always be reported
List different types of bullying
- Physical bullying (e.g., hitting, kicking, pushing,
damaging property etc.) - Verbal bullying (e.g., name calling, insults, teasing,
intimidation etc.) - Social/relational/covert bullying (e.g., lying and
spreading rumours, nasty jokes, encouraging others
to socially exclude, damaging reputation) - Cyber bullying (e.g., abusive DMs, online exclusion,
imitating another online) → verbal and/or social
bullying via digital technology
What are the measurements of bullying behaviour: Informant
- Self Report
- Peer Report
- Parent/ Teacher Report
Positives and negatives of self report
+ individual view of bullying events
+ conveys experiences that others not observe or may
not consider bullying
-inherently subjective
Positives and negatives of peer report
+ more objective
+ multiple raters
+ classmates typically have access to information that is hidden from adults
-tendency for peers to underreport bullying behaviours
Positives and negatives of Parent/ Teacher report
+ can get information on bullying behaviour for a whole class (teacher)
+ useful when children are young
-Bullying is not always reported or observed by parents/teachers
How do we measure bullying behaviour?
- Different informants
- Single item questions (with/without definition of bullying)- are you involved in bullying/ are you are bully
- Behaviour-based scale with multiple items- have you been kicked in the last month/ have people called you mean names
- Specific bullying behaviours (verbal, physical, social, cyber)
- Different frequency – scale and cut-off threshold. (might have different amounts of being hit- once a week, twice a week ect). Then decide when you will draw the line to call out bullying. Difference research groups have different times they call it out so how do you directly compare.
Different frequencies- why is this problematic?
At best- having difficulty comparing across studies
At worst- studies aren’t measuring bullying behaviour at all
Prevalence of bullying:
Nansel et al. (2004)
Method
- Design = cross-sectional across 25 countries in 11- to 16-year-olds
- Measured bully, victim (and bully-victim status)
- N = 113,200
- Standard definition of bullying presented
- Single item for bully and victimisation
- Cut off = 2 times or more per current academic term
Prevalence of bullying:
Nansel et al. (2004)
Results
- 11% of children were victims of bullying
- 10% of children admitted bullying others in the current school term
- 6% report being both bullies and victims
Prevalence of bullying:
Results across countries
There are big differences across countries in terms of the amount of bullying and victimisation
It looks like they are all european and western
Highest- Lithuania
Lowest- Sweden
Why is it important to understand the prevalence of bullying in schools?
Because bullying has lasting mental health outcomes for young people.
For longitudinal studies- even children have poor mental health problems to start with, bullying makes it worse
Nansel et al. (2004)
Results for different psychosocial Adjustment Dimensions
Health problems- victims, bullies and bully-victims have above average physical health problems compared to non-involved children.
Emotional adjustment- victims and bully-victims have more negative emotional adjustment
Bullies themselves seem to have average (it doesn’t seem to impact them negatively)
Relationship with classmates- negative relationship for victims and bully-victims
Alcohol use- victims are average and look like noninvolved but the act of bullying behaviour is what puts you at risk for alcohol use. Bullies having negative impact
School adjustment- seems to be impacting victims, bullies and bully-victims
There seems to be differential impacts on classroom and mood based outcomes dependent on if you’re a victim of bullying, engaging in bullying or experiencing both.
What are the cognitive/individual origins of bullying
(US tradition)
- Social information processing biases
- Socio-cognitive strengths and/or weaknesses
- Social goals
US tradition – based in research on childhood aggression
Cognitive approach:
Social Information Processing
When you experience something social, you go through a series of cognitive processing to help decide how to respond
- Measured using ambiguous (eg. in a busy hall and someone bumps you and it up to you to decide if its intentional or unintentional) and non ambiguous vignettes
- Links between social adjustment and social information processing
Social Information Processing Model- Crick & Dodge (1994)
- Encoding of cues (both internal and external)
- Interpretation of cues
- casual attributes
- intent attributes
- other interpretive processes
— evaluation of goal attainment
— evaluation of past performance
— self-evaluations
— other evaluations - clarification of goals
- arousal regulation - Response access or construction
- Response decision
- response evaluation
- outcome expectations
- self-efficacy evaluations
- response selection - Behavioural enactment
- Peer evaluations and response
DATA BASE
- memory store
- acquired rules
- social schemas
- social knowledge
What distinct pattern of biases do aggressive children show in their social information processing?
- attend to fewer social cues
- more inclined to attribute hostile intentions to others
- goals of social dominance
- choose an aggressive solutions to a social problem
Cognitive approach: Theory of Mind
Strategic aggressive behaviour that the perpetrator repeatedly inflicts on a victim with the intention to cause harm, and occurring within a relationship in which there is an imbalance of power
Bullying may be best achieved when the perpetrator has a strong grasp of the internal mental states of victims?
Cognitive approach: Theory of Mind
Sutton et al. (1999)
Method
N = 193 7 – 10 year olds.
Participant Role Scale (Salmivalli et al., 1996)
2 ways to be a bully in this study:
Bully- active, inactive taking, leader-like behaviour
Assistant- active, but more follower than leader-like
Cognitive approach: Theory of Mind
Sutton et al. (1999)
Results
mean % total social cognition score
for whole sample: 39.59
Bully: 45.64
Assistant: 37.88
For the bullies, they have an above average ToM
Assistants have below average slightly ToM
Bullies have hostile intention, tend to have more aggression
Cognitive approach:
Moral sensitivity meaning and study
Moral sensitivity = Happy Victimiser task: understanding of right and wrong and the emotional repercussions of moral transgressions
Gasser & Keller, 2009 compared moral sensitivity in 7- to 8-year-olds categorised as bullies, victims, and bully-victims, and found: bullies (and bully-victims) both showed low moral sensitivity
Cognitive approach:
Moral disengagement meaning and study
Moral disengagement = tendency to use cognitive mechanisms that can disengage self-sanctions and justify the use of violent and aggressive behaviours (e.g., kids can’t be blamed for misbehaving if their
friends pressured them into it).
Gini (2006) looked at the association between moral disengagement and bullying → bullies engaged in significantly more moral disengagement compared to non-bullies.
(eg. not my fault I punched that kid he was asking for it)
Understanding why individuals bully:
A social approach
- Early work on bullying used the Swedish term mobbning (i.e., mobbing): group of children ganging up on a victim
- The group is now seen as including many different actors or roles who are bullying behaviour
Salmivali (2010)
Social approach: Diversity of roles
What were the different roles and what was found after studying young adolescence?
(Salmivalli et al., 1996)
- Bully / Victim / Bully-Victim
- Assistant
- Reinforcer- might insight the bullying behaviour but not engage themselves
- Defender- stick up for victim
- Outsider/Bystander (peers present in 85% of incidents; Pepler, 2010)
Studied young adolescents and found:
- 17–20% identified as defenders (want as many as possible to decrease role of bulying behaviour)
- 20–29% reinforced or assisted the bully
- Only 10% of children had no role!
What are the three key social goals that have been studied?
- agentic (i.e., striving for dominance and leadership),
- communal (i.e., striving for positive relationships with others)
- submissive goals (i.e., keeping a low social profile)
Bullying as a strategy to ________________
Meet specific social and dominance goals
Link bullies, victims and defenders with social goals
Bullies → greater identification with agentic goals
Victims → greater identification with submissive goals
Defenders → greater identification with communal goals
How you behave in a social group appears to be a good reflection of your social goals.
Social approach: Peer Status
- what has bullying been linked to
BUT:
- what do some bullies have?
- term?
- Bullying has been linked to peer rejection
But
- Some bullies have high social standing in the peer group
- Perceived popularity – children are asked who is the most popular child in the class, with bullies often nominated as popular (even if not well-liked). Dominance and visibility in the peer group.
Difference in bullying behaviours between perceived popularity and social preference
Children who engaged in bullying and act as defenders are perceived popular
But when you ask to children who they like to play with, they chose defenders and not bullies
Bullying is fulfilling a social role
School climate
School/classroom climate: The extent to which students feel connected to/safe in their school and have positive perceptions of their teachers and school
Get differences between schools and classrooms to whether children feel safe and feel supported by their teachers
“At this school we care about each other”,
“We can talk to our teachers about our
problems”.
- Malleable and a good target for intervention- can provide schools with resources on how they can increase school climate and therefore decrease bullying
School climate study Fink et al. (2018)
Method
Poor school climate is consistently linked to greater bullying and victimisation in school.
Large UK-based study:
23,215 children (51% boys) recruited from Year 4 or Year 5 (M = 9.06 years, SD = .56 years) from 648 primary schools in England
School climate study Fink et al. (2018)
Results
Found that school climate explained bullying behaviour over and above any (a) individual characteristics of the child and (b) school demographic factors, e.g., level of school deprivation.
What has been found with societal inequality and bullying
- Bullying wasn’t associated with economic level of the country
- Bullying was associated with country-level income inequality
Due at al, 2009
Components of bullying interventions
- Curriculum and classroom learning, includes lectures, videos, classroom discussion, role play and other learning activities
- Parent involvement through training or meetings
- Peer mentoring, mediation, befriending, counseling
- Playground supervision
- Disciplinary methods
- Teacher training and support
- Whole school policies
- Classroom rules
- Restorative justice procedures
- School conferences
- Poster campaigns
- and lots more…
