Bullying and its association with altruism toward victims, blaming the victims, and classroom prevalence of bystander behaviors: a multilevel analysis

Abstract

With reference to social-ecological, self-determination, attributional, and social cognitive theories, the current study examined whether gender, age, altruistic motivation to defend victims, and tendency to blame the victims, at the individual level, and the prevalence of reinforcing and defending, at the classroom level, were associated with bullying. A sample of 901 Swedish students (9-13 years old, M = 11.00, SD = .83) from 43 classrooms filled out a questionnaire. Multilevel regression analyses revealed that the perpetration of bullying was positively associated with the prevalence of reinforcing at the classroom level and blaming the victims at the individual level, whereas it was negatively associated with altruistic motivation to defend victims of bullying at the individual level. Furthermore, students with high altruistic motivation to defend victims of bullying were less inclined to bully, independent of the classroom level of reinforcing. The current study suggests that bullying prevention and intervention programs should: explicitly target bystander behaviors, in particular to reduce the prevalence of reinforcing bullying; include efforts to strengthen altruistic self-concept and motivation to defend victims; and prevent, challenge, and counteract tendencies among students to blame the victim.

Positive relationships for the prevention of bullying and cyberbullying: a study in Aragón (Spain)

“…Finally, it has been observed that the inclusion of the figure of the bystander in the analysis was fundamental, given that the prevalence of attending situations of relational aggressions or bullying through the Internet was reduced when relations with the environment were more positive, in the same proportion as preventing aggresions and victimization. This fact that calls for a greater attention to this figure, as already claimed by Thornberg and Wänström (2018) or Olenik-Shemesh et al (2017).…”

“…In the case of the latent variables of "Peer Victimization" and "Bully Perpetration", Rawlings uses The University of Illinois Aggression Scales (Espelage & Holt, 2001) to assess the occurrence of bullying behavior and victimization by peers, and the Internet Harassment Victimization scale and Internet Harassment Perpetration scale, both by Ybarra, Espelage, and Mitchell (2007), to assess those cyberbullying behaviors. Using a lickert scale 1-5 (from never to 7 times or more), these variables measure the frequency of aggressions and cyber-aggressions in victims such as "my classmates made fun of me" or "they call me names", and in bullies, as "upset" or "exclude" (see Figure 1) Based on the theory by Bronbrenbrenner's and the empirical work by Rawlings (2017), in the present research we set out to analyze the influence of the micro and meso-level relationships in the behaviors of aggression and victimization of bullying and cyberbullying, following Fettrow (2013) or Hong and Espelage (2012), and adding the figure of the bystander, being an agent so far less analyzed by the literature, but with a relevance demonstrated by authors such as Thornberg andWänström (2018) for bullying, or Olenik-Shemesh et al (2017) for cyberbullying. Following Thornberg and Wänström (2018), if we take into account socio-ecological theories in the explanation of bullying situations, we cannot ignore the role of bystander as a relevant agent in blaming the victims (reinforcing bullying behaviors) or defending and reinforcing them(preventing aggressions).…”

“…Using a lickert scale 1-5 (from never to 7 times or more), these variables measure the frequency of aggressions and cyber-aggressions in victims such as "my classmates made fun of me" or "they call me names", and in bullies, as "upset" or "exclude" (see Figure 1) Based on the theory by Bronbrenbrenner's and the empirical work by Rawlings (2017), in the present research we set out to analyze the influence of the micro and meso-level relationships in the behaviors of aggression and victimization of bullying and cyberbullying, following Fettrow (2013) or Hong and Espelage (2012), and adding the figure of the bystander, being an agent so far less analyzed by the literature, but with a relevance demonstrated by authors such as Thornberg andWänström (2018) for bullying, or Olenik-Shemesh et al (2017) for cyberbullying. Following Thornberg and Wänström (2018), if we take into account socio-ecological theories in the explanation of bullying situations, we cannot ignore the role of bystander as a relevant agent in blaming the victims (reinforcing bullying behaviors) or defending and reinforcing them(preventing aggressions). Another contribution of the hypothetical model that we present here to the previous model by Rawlings (2017), in the case of the latent construct of relations with the school context, is that, in addition to measuring the students' relationships with their classmates and teachers, we have included their relationships with other members of the educational community (principals, staff, general relationships in the school center), and between families and the school.…”

Links between adolescent bullying and neural activation to viewing social exclusion

“…Our results show bullying relates to heightened activation in neural regions associated with motivation and salience when viewing such circumstances, suggesting that when considering why individuals engage in such acts, a lack of socioemotional awareness on behalf of the perpetrator may be unwarranted. Instead, these findings highlight the role that social interventions may be able to play: if bullies are aware of what they are doing, then moving away from perceived "deficiencies" and instead devoting resources to studying the system level buffers which may push individuals towards or away from aggressing is crucial (Salmivalli, Voeten, & Poskiparta, 2011;Thornberg & Wänström, 2018). Social componentssuch as classroom culture, adult supervision or intervening classmatescan help mitigate the worst expressions of bullying (Chan et al, 2016) but have not been examined via neuroscience paradigms.…”

Empowering the Peer Group to Prevent School Bullying in Kosovo: Effectiveness of a Short and Ultra-Short Version of the ViSC Social Competence Program

“…Being defended matters for youth who are bullied, because they are more likely to escape from an escalating circle of bullying (Hawkins et al 2001;O'Connell et al 1999) and they are less likely to suffer from mental health problems compared to their non-defended peers (Juvonen et al 2016;Sainio et al 2010). Defending also matters on the class level, because in classes where defending is supported by descriptive and injunctive norms, bullying rates are lower (Pozzoli et al 2012;Salmivalli et al 2011;Thornberg and Wänström 2018).…”