Bullying and the Big Five

Abstract

Research on the social context of bullying includes children who help the victim, assist the bully or remain outsiders. 96 children from two public schools in Central Italy were classified according to an Italian version of the Participant Role Scale (Sutton and Smith, 1999) as Defenders of the Victim, Outsiders, Victims or Pro-bullies. Teacher reports indicated Friendliness and Emotional Instability as the strongest distinguishing personality factors among the participant roles, followed by Conscientiousness and Energy. Higher levels of Emotional Instability and lower levels of Friendliness typified both Pro-bullies and Victims, relative to their peers. Victims were also low in Conscientiousness. Defenders exhibited high levels of Friendliness, whereas Introversion and Independence characterized Outsiders. These results suggest that personality traits might contribute to children's typical behaviour in bullying situations.

Personality traits moderate the Big-Fish–Little-Pond Effect of academic self-concept

“…Hence, it is possible that not specific anxiety for mathematics but rather a more generalized, unspecific anxiety affects self-concept formation. A small number of studies have related neuroticism to poorer school adjustment and poorer peer relationships at school (Lamb, Chuang, Wessels, Broberg, & Hwang, 2002) and a higher likelihood of victimization (Tani, Greenman, Schneider, & Fregoso, 2003). The present study provides us with further insights into the difficult academic life of emotionally unstable students.…”

Psychological and background correlates of bullying in adolescent residential care

“…In all studies that measured it, psychoticism was related to bullying others (Connolly & O'Moore, 2003;Mynard & Joseph, 1997;. In all studies that examined the Big Five model, agreeableness was negatively related to bullying either for all bullies (Bollmer et al, 2006;Tani et al, 2003) or only for pure bullies (Turner & Ireland, 2010). Openness was not associated with bullying in any of the studies.…”

“…To date, six school-based studies (Bollmer, Harris, & Milich, 2006;Connolly & O'Moore, 2003;Farrington & Baldry, 2010;Mynard & Joseph, 1997;Tani, Greenman, Schneider, & Fregoso, 2003) and one prison-based study (Turner & Ireland, 2010) have examined the relationship between structural models of personality and bullying. 4 Although not directly comparable, the above-mentioned seven studies reported some consistency in the way that personality traits relate to bullying.…”

Children Who Help Victims of Bullying: Implications for Practice

“…Children who defend appear to have healthier self-esteem than children in other roles ), more favorable academic and emotional self-concept (Salmivalli 1998), and more social self-efficacy (Gini et al 2008). Tani, Greenman, Schneider, and Fregoso (2003) found that children identified as defenders score higher than children in all other roles on trait agreeableness, which includes trait altruism. Finally, nine out of the 13 studies examined that directly consider defending behavior find boys to be underrepresented among children who defend as compared to girls (Goossens et al 2006;Menesini et al 2003;Salmivalli et al 1996Salmivalli et al , 1998Salmivalli et al , 1999Salmivalli et al , 2005Salmivalli and Voeten 2004;Sutton and Smith 1999), though results are mixed in one study (Sutton and Smith 1999).…”