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This article provides an introductory overview of findings from the past 40 years of research on bullying among school-aged children and youth. Research on definitional and assessment issues in studying bullying and victimization is reviewed, and data on prevalence rates, stability, and forms of bullying behavior are summarized, setting the stage for the 5 articles that comprise this American Psychologist special issue on bullying and victimization. These articles address bullying, victimization, psychological sequela and consequences, ethical, legal, and theoretical issues facing educators, researchers, and practitioners, and effective prevention and intervention efforts. The goal of this special issue is to provide psychologists with a comprehensive review that documents our current understanding of the complexity of bullying among school-aged youth and directions for future research and intervention efforts.

With growing recognition that bullying is a complex phenomenon, influenced by multiple factors, research findings to date have been understood within a social-ecological framework. Consistent with this model, we review research on the known correlates and contributing factors in bullying/victimization within the individual, family, peer group, school and community. Recognizing the fluid and dynamic nature of involvement in bullying, we then expand on this model and consider research on the consequences of bullying involvement, as either victim or bully or both, and propose a social-ecological, diathesis-stress model for understanding the bullying dynamic and its impact. Specifically, we frame involvement in bullying as a stressful life event for both children who bully and those who are victimized, serving as a catalyst for a diathesis-stress connection between bullying, victimization, and psychosocial difficulties. Against this backdrop, we suggest that effective bullying prevention and intervention efforts must take into account the complexities of the human experience, addressing both individual characteristics and history of involvement in bullying, risk and protective factors, and the contexts in which bullying occurs, in order to promote healthier social relationships.

In this article, the authors review research on individual, peer, and school contributions that may be critical factors for enhancing efforts to address bullying among students. Methodological challenges are delineated, with an emphasis on how bullying is defined and assessed and the subsequent implications for bullying prevention and intervention program evaluation. The impact of school-based anti-bullying programs and the challenges currently facing educators and researchers in this area are discussed. The article concludes with a proposal for a broader, ecologically based model of school bullying based on the emerging literature.

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Moral disengagement is a series of cognitive processes used to disengage moral standards to achieve absolved guilt and permit immoral conduct and has been found to be an important connection to bullying and aggressive behaviors among adolescents. This study examined the longitudinal relationship between moral disengagement and bullying behavior among a group of adolescents from fifth grade to ninth grade (n = 1180, mean age = 12.2, SD = 1.29, 46.5 % female, 80.2 % Caucasian/White, 7.1 % Black/African American, 5.4 % Latino/Hispanic, 2.4 % Asian American, and 1.7 % other) over three semesters. The objectives were to investigate (a) whether moral disengagement was a precursor to bullying behavior, vice versa, or whether the relationship was reciprocal and (b) whether gender and grade predicted moral disengagement and bullying behavior. The results showed that moral disengagement predicted bullying perpetration 6 months later. Also, older students and males utilized more moral disengagement than younger students and females and younger students and males engaged in greater bullying perpetration. Indirect paths linking gender and grade to bullying via moral disengagement at previous time points were identified and implications for bullying prevention are discussed. The findings underscore the importance of examining moral disengagement when studying bullying and across gender and development.

This study examined effects of adolescent males' perceptions of being bullied because of verbal taunts related to gender nonconformity (i.e., "They say I'm gay"). Participants included 251 ninth-(n = 77), tenth-(n = 96), and eleventh-(n = 78) grade students in a private, all-male college preparatory school. Participants were divided into two groups based on whether they were bullied by being called gay. Out of the 251 participants, 121 (48%) reported having been bullied and 127 (50%) stated that they had not been bullied during the past year (2% did not report). Of the 121 participants who had been bullied, 32 (26%) reported that they had been bullied because others called them gay (Group 1) and 89 (74%) reported that they had been bullied for other reasons, exclusive of being called gay (Group 2). Consistent with predictions, the boys who were bullied because they were called gay experienced greater psychological distress, greater verbal and physical bullying, and more negative perceptions of their school experiences than boys who were bullied for other reasons. Implications for school-based intervention services for bullying are discussed.