Self‐esteem and its relationship to bullying behaviour

Abstract

From the rapidly growing literature on bullying, it is increasingly recognised that peer relationship problems as manifested in being bullied are associated with low self-esteem. However, the literature on self-esteem in relation to children who bully others is controversial. The objective of this paper is to elucidate further our understanding of the relationship between self-concept and bullying behaviour. Data from a nationwide study of bullying behaviour carried out in Ireland during 1993-1994 have been reviewed. The relevant results from 8,249 school children aged 8 to 18 years are presented. The paper examines the global and dimensional nature of self-esteem and how it relates to children and adolescents who either have been victimised or bullied others. A distinction is made between "pure victims," "pure bullies," and children and adolescents who were both bullied and who bullied others. In other words, pure victims were those who had not bullied others, and pure bullies had not themselves been bullied. Those who were both bullied and bullied others were subdivided further into victims who bully occasionally, sometimes, and frequently and bullies who are victimised, occasionally, sometimes, and frequently. The results show that children of both primary and post-primary age who were involved in bullying as victims, bullies, or both had significantly lower global self-esteem than did children who had neither bullied nor been bullied. However, the pure bullies, in contrast to the pure victims, placed the same value on their physical attractiveness and attributes and on their popularity as did their peers who had not bullied others or been bullied. The bully-victims of all ages had the lowest self-esteem of the subgroups in the study. Also, the more frequently children were victimised or bullied others, the lower was their global self-esteem. The typology and frequency of bullying and the age of the children when they were involved in bullying influenced the status of the specific domains of self-esteem. There were, e.g., significant differences in anxiety between the pure bullies of post-primary age and their peers who had not bullied others or been bullied. The postprimary children who bullied most frequently were the least anxious. The results indicate that high self-esteem protects children and adolescents from involvement in bullying. Thus, in view of the strong relationship between self-esteem and bullying that has been found in the present paper, it is recommended that top priority be given by parents and teachers to preventing and reducing feelings of poor self-worth among children and adolescents. Aggr. Behav. 27:269-283, 2001.

Bullying Experiences Among Children and Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…These findings are consistent with international bullying literature, which indicates that children who are victimized are more likely than peers to exhibit various internalizing and externalizing mental health problems (Delfabbro et al, 2006;Grills & Ollendick, 2002;Haynie et al, 2001;Mitchell, Ybarra, & Finkelhor, 2007;Nansel et al, 2001Nansel et al, , 2003Nansel et al, , 2004Ybarra & Mitchell, 2004. Victimization is stressful for Bullying 16 children and negatively impacts self-concept, both of which are associated with mental health problems (Grills & Ollendick, 2002;Marsh, Parada, Yeung, & Healey, 2001;Nansel, 2004;O'Moore & Kirkham, 2001). This relationship is likely bidirectional, however, as children with mental health problems tend to be at risk for victimization (Fekkes et al, 2006).…”

Schoolchildren's social representations on bullying causes

“…This social representation contains some elements that can be related to the research conducted by Olweus (1993) indicating that bullies are often aggressive and impulsive, have a strong need to dominate others (which also can be connected to the representation on bullying as power positioning), and live in families with aggression problems and/or neglectful parenting. Even if their idea that bullies are insecure or suffer from poor self-esteem is a controversial topic among researchers (see Olweus, 1993;O'Moore & Kirkham, 2001), this still seems to be a widespread social representation among the students in this study. Nevertheless, according to a symbolic interactionist and labeling theory perspective (cf., Becker, 1963;Charon, 2007), this social representation on bullying as the work of a disturbed bully risks promoting a social process that stigmatizes and negatively labels the bully in a way that can be problematized in terms of identity construction and behavior conservation, and in the light of research showing that students who initiate bullying will be at a higher risk of developing criminal behavior as compared to other young adults (Garrett, 2003;Olweus, 1993;Sourander et al, 2006).…”

“…The victim is labeled as deviant, which results in social rejection and further peer abuse as well as the victim's risk of developing a negative self-image. For instance, victims of bullying tend to be lower in several measures of self-esteem (Boulton & Smith, 1994;Rigby, 2003;Roland, 2002), seeing themselves as more troublesome, more anxious, less popular, less physically attractive, and as having lower intellectual and school status than their peers (Hawker & Boulton, 2000;O'Moore & Kirkham, 2001;Rigby, 2003), and they tend to have low self-concept and low self-esteem, and experience depression in adulthood (Boulton & Underwood, 1992;Olweus, 1993).…”

Considering mindfulness techniques in school-based anti-bullying programmes

“…For traditional bullying, exposure to such incidences has been associated with anxiety (Stapinksi et al, 2014;Pabian & Vandebosch, 2016), depression and suicidal behaviour (Bauman, Toomey, & Walker, 2013), eating disorders , borderline personality disorder (Wolke, Shreier, Zanarini, & Winsper, 2012), lower self-esteem (O'Moore & Kirkham, 2001) and psychosomatic problems (Fekkes, Pijpers, & Verloove-Vanhorick, 2004). Lower school achievement (Nakamoto & Schwartz, 2010), higher school delinquency (Barboza, 2015) and school dropout (Cornell, Gregory, Huang, & Fan, 2013) are also attributed to victimisation.…”