The Impact of Personal Values, Gender Stereotypes, and School Climate on Homophobic Bullying: a Multilevel Analysis

Abstract

Introduction Schools are among the most homophobic social contexts, where students who do not conform to gender norms are at high risk of stigma and discrimination. Method Using a multilevel approach, the aim of the current was to examine whether adolescents' engagement in homophobic bullying behavior was associated with personal values and stereotyped victim-blaming attributions at individual level, and perceptions of school as a community and frequency of teachers' reaction to bullying incidents at classroom level. Data were collected in 2010. The sample consisted of 2718 Italian middle and high school students (53.2% females; mean age = 15.36, SD = .85) from 144 classrooms. Results Results showed that self-transcendence values reduced the risk of engaging in homophobic bullying, whereas both selfenhancement values and stereotyped victim-blaming attributions were positively associated with homophobic bullying. At classroom level, only negative perceptions of school as a community had a unique positive contribution on homophobic bullying, over and above other individual and contextual factors. Two cross-level interactions were found, indicating that selftranscendence values had a significant effect in decreasing homophobic bullying in classrooms where teacher support was perceived as low, whereas stereotyped victim-blaming attributions had a significant effect in increasing homophobic bullying in classrooms where teacher support was perceived as high. Conclusion These findings provide further support to the social-ecological perspective as a useful guiding framework for understanding the complexity of factors predicting homophobic bullying. Policy Implications Efforts should be made to develop clear anti-bullying school policies explicitly dealing with the issue of homophobic bullying.

Bullying and Cyberbullying among Italian Adolescents: The Influence of Psychosocial Factors on Violent Behaviours

“…To help the reader these two items have been translated into English). Then, the findings confirm links between stigma and deviant attitudes, which can give rise to discrimination and violence, as suggested by many authors [32,45,46].…”

“…This effect is amplified for students who break the stereotypes "the violation of racial and ethnic stereotypes may created bullying victimization among racial and ethnic minority youth" ( [31], p. 559). Secondly, stereotyped gender attributions are predictors of bullying behaviors, especially in the form of homophobic bullying [32]. As mentioned above, the relationship between children and parents is a strong predictor of both bullying and victimisation behaviours.…”

Latent profile analysis of personal values among Chinese college students: associations with mental health disorders and life satisfaction

“…Benish-Weisman et al ( 2017 ) found that aggressive behavior was positively related to self-enhancement while negatively related to self-transcendence across different cultures (e.g., Germany, Italy, Israel, and the United States). This relationship was also found in homophobic bullying (Bacchini et al, 2020 ), interpersonal violence (Rossi et al, 2019 ), and lawbreaking behavior (Borg & Hermann, 2020 ). Aggressive behavior was found to have weak relationships with openness to change and conservation values, varying across studies and contexts (Benish-Weisman et al, 2017 ).…”

Stigmatization of Consensual Non-Monogamous Partners: Perceived Endorsement of Conservation or Openness to Change Values Vary According to Personal Attitudes

“…Specific values have been associated with increased or decreased stigmatization and prejudice toward certain outgroup members. For example, individuals who endorse conservation values tend to have more prejudice toward immigrants (Davidov et al, 2008;Falanga et al, 2015) and individuals from sexual minorities (Bacchini et al, 2021;Donaldson et al, 2017;Kuntz et al, 2015). They are less likely to engage with members of low-status groups (Sagiv & Schwartz, 1995) and have negative affective responses and judgment toward members of stigmatized groups (i.e., drug users; Skinner et al, 2007).…”