The effects of ethnic group membership on bullying at school: when do observers dehumanize bullies?

Abstract

The purpose of this experiment was to test how ethnic group membership of both the bullies and the victims influence the way that observers attribute human characteristics to bullies. Ethnic group membership was manipulated in terms of bullies' and victims' ethnicity (ingroup-majority group versus outgroup-minority group). Furthermore, we examined the mediating role of empathic concern towards the victim and perspective taking of the bully in the relation between ethnic group membership of bullies and victims and attributions of humanness to the bullies. We hypothesized that observers would attribute lower human characteristics to outgroup bullies when bullies inflict harm on an ingroup victim. Moreover, we expected that perspective taking of the bully and empathic concern towards the victim would mediate this relation. Analysis of data from a sample of 293 Greek-Cypriot adolescents fully corroborated our hypotheses. The findings are discussed in terms of the discrimination-based nature of bullying at school.

Understanding, attitudes and dehumanisation towards autistic people

“…The poor internal consistency of the measure in comparison to past research with other groups as the outgroup (e.g. Fousiani et al, 2018) could relate to participants in this study showing greater variation across each trait item rating particularly for autistic people. Kteily et al (2015) compared both subtle measures (such as that used in this study) and blatant measures (e.g.…”

“…Likewise, internal consistency was marginally acceptable for human uniqueness traits for ratings of non-autistic people ( ω = 0.63) and poorer for ratings of autistic people ( ω = 0.58). Previous studies have reported good internal consistency for human uniqueness ( ω = 0.85) and human nature traits ( ω = 0.74; Fousiani et al, 2018) although the measure may have low test–retest reliability (Kteily et al, 2015).…”

“…Previous studies have reported good internal consistency for human uniqueness (.85) and human nature traits (.74;Fousiani, Michaelides & Dimitropoulou, 2018) although the measure may have low test-retest reliability (Kteily et al, 2015).…”

Perspective-taking and belief in a just world matter: Adolescents’ role experiences in bullying processes

“…In their systematic review of 40 empathy studies, van Noorden et al ( 2014) cited a range of small-to-moderate effect sizes between dispositional PT and bullying experiences that were age group-specific (e.g., for young adolescents aged 11 to 13). Sex consistently determined both empathy dimensions and experiences in bullying processes separately at low levels (van Noorden et al, 2014) as well as ethnical background (Fousiani et al, 2019;Strohmeier et al, 2008).…”

“…Previous research uncovered, as mentioned in Sect. 5, predictive effects of age (van Noorden et al, 2014), gender, ethnical background (Fousiani et al, 2019), and electronic device (Bjereld et al, 2017) that the adolescents used to participate in the online survey were included. We therefore included these variables in our single SEM.…”