Bullying 2 and deviant peers Flashcards
What key components of bullying do cyber bullying and traditional bullying share?
A victim-aggressor power imbalance, intention to harm, strategic and repeated
Cyber-bullying: different forms
- Direct (message them) or indirect (message peer group)
- Anonymous (imbalance of power?)
- Speed and spread much greater than face-to-face bullying → third parties forward the messages (repeated).
- More sexual in content? (e.g., revenge porn, intimate photos shared without your consent)
- Much less adult supervision of cyber-space
- Less energy and courage needed
- Can bully 24/7; at home and at school
Prevalence of Cyberbullying?
Broad range in estimates of cyberbullying prevalence: ranging from 3-4% to 40%. Some studies even reported that as many as 50% of young people were cyber-bullied (Olweus & Limber, 2018).
- Different time scales
- Different cut-off points
- Different threshold values
Features of cyber bullying make it hard to compare across studies due to inconsistencies
But also – cyberbullying is studied in isolation from traditional bullying (i.e., not anchored in the definition of bullying). If you haven’t got these features, it’s just aggressive behaviour rather than bullying.
Prevalence of cyberbullying in secondary schools
England has the highest %
Conservative review- the majority of incidents in secondary schools are probably not being escalated to the head teacher. So this is probably the most extreme cases that are being reported. These reportings are quite high.
But this was talking about cyber aggression and when positioning cyber bullying as a facet of bullying, these proportions drop off.
Traditional vs. Cyber-bullying
Halliday et al., 2022
- n= 9,019
- age = 10 -13 years
- frequency cut off = at least once a month
Cyber bullying shown to be the least- 7.2%
Traditional vs. Cyber-bullying
Olweus & Limber, 2018
- n= 447, 000
- Frequency cut-off = 2-3 times/month
More or less, cyber bullying has remained stable as has verbal bullying.
It looks like cyber bullying is less common than traditional bullying and if we measure cyber bullying in the context of verbal physical and social It looks like it’s pretty stable over time.
Verbal bullying much higher than cyber (18% vs 4%)
Overlap with traditional bullying?
- what is the overlap
- examples
Overlap between experiencing traditional and cyber-bullying is very high
- Across different studies typically between 50 - 90% of those students who had experienced cyberbullying also experienced ‘traditional’ bullying
(Olweus & Limber, 2018) - In a study of 2745 adolescents between 11 and 16 years, 29% of students reported experiencing bullying only 1% were purely cyberbullied (Wolke et al., 2017)
Cyberbullying and outcomes for drug use, liking school, feeling safe, sadness, real life friends and well-being
(Carvalho et al., 2021)
Combined the bullies and victims of cyber bullying and traditional bullying
The combination of being bullied at school and online seems to be particularly bad for all these different outcomes.
Cyberbullying on its own is mostly worse compared to just being bullied in school
The combination of both being bullied online and at school seems to be the worst possible scenario here. These children don’t feel safe, there is a lot of negative affect, they have much less than the average number of real friends ect.
Take home message- the combination of both being traditionally bullied and cyber bullied has an additive impact on students’ well-being and school outcomes.
Friendship: characteristics
- Dyadic relationship between children – mutually reciprocated
- Voluntary (children go into this friendship because they want to and they get something out of it)
- Intimate - shared interests, affectionate
- Stable
- Differ from other dyadic relationships (e.g. parent-child)- friendships are considered horizontal- equal friendship
Consequences of poor peer relationships
- Consensus that peer relationships and friendships are important for later mental health and wellbeing
- Children with a reciprocated best friend are more adjusted and socially competent than children without friends
- For children who may be victimised, friendships buffer against the negative impact victimisation has on wellbeing
- Friendship and peer acceptance (i.e., sociometric status) as predictive of children’s academic achievement at school
What is Homophily?
What are 2 processes that support this?
The tendency of like-minded individuals to be attracted to one another
2 processes that support this:
1- selection: children affiliate and befriend peers who are similar to themselves on a variety of behavioural or physical characteristics
2- socialisation: processes of influence or contagion among peers (they tend to become more like each other over time)
But not all peer relationships are equally beneficial…the case of aggressive children
- what training + def
- 2 studies
- implication
Deviancy Training: “A pattern of interactions between ‘deviant’ peers in which aggressive behaviour and/or discussion of rule breaking is contingently reinforced (e.g., with laughter and approving verbalisations)”
- Patterson et al (1967) observed interactions between boys in preschool playgrounds & showed that success of aggressive responses to peer conflict predicted future aggression with peers (Similar findings for girls)
- Snyder et al (1997): aggressive preschoolers also prefer one another in play, and such play leads to later increases in aggressive behavior
Together, research suggests that aggressive children aggregate into increasingly aggressive groups (i.e., deviant friendships)
Leading to more negative outcomes
But not all peer relationships are equally
beneficial…the case of aggressive children
- what are aggressive children more likely to be?
- what predicts conduct disorders and age?
- Aggressive children are also more likely to be rejected from the peer group
—This peer experience maintains and exacerbates children’s aggressive behaviour
— Limits opportunities for the acquisition of social skills, and positive
peer interactions - Peer rejection at 5 independently predicts conduct disorders at 10
Early childhood through to adolescence different behaviours
Early childhood:
Deviance, poor self regulation
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Peer rejection, aggressive friends
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Middle childhood:
Reactive and proactive antisocial behaviour
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School failures, deviant peers
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Adolescence:
Drug use, sexual misconduct, criminality
Deviancy training: Adolescence
- increases in?
- drifting?
- friendship characterised by?
- Increases in weapon carrying over the course of a year linked to associating with friends who carry weapons
- Drifting into a deviant peer group was a core component for cascading progression from antisocial behaviour to serious violence
- Friendships characterised by deviant stories, endorsements of deviant attitudes, norm violating behaviour etc. predicted growth in delinquency, drug use & violent behaviour
