Moral emotions and bullying: A cross-national comparison of differences between bullies, victims and outsiders

Desengajamentos morais, autoeficácia e bullying: a trama da convivência || Moral disengagement, self-efficacy and bullying: the framework of coexistence studies

Neste artigo, discute-se a relação entre bullying e desengajamentos morais. Numa investigação com 2600 adolescentes de 14 a 16 anos, buscou-se verificar seu envolvimento em situações de bullying, suas crenças de autoeficácia quanto ao desempenho acadêmico e os possíveis desengajamentos morais demonstrados por eles. Encontrou-se uma correspondência entre ser agressor de bullying e a “desumanização da vítima”. A participação no bullying como autores, vítimas e espectadores também se associou a “culpabilização da vítima” demonstrando o perfil de alvos de bullying frágeis e com pouco valor. Encontrou-se também uma correspondência entre “bom ou muito bom” aluno e menor desengajamento moral, ao comparar-se as crenças de autoeficácia acadêmica e desengajamentos morais. Os resultados deste estudo possibilitaram a compreensão dos mecanismos psicológicos presentes no bullying, a fim de que a escola possa repensar as intervenções e prevenções que realiza para que a convivência seja um valor.

Emotion perception accuracy and bias in face-to-face versus cyberbullying

The authors investigated the association of traditional and cyber forms of bullying and victimization with emotion perception accuracy and emotion perception bias. Four basic emotions were considered (i.e., happiness, sadness, anger, and fear); 526 middle school students (280 females; M age = 12.58 years, SD = 1.16 years) were recruited, and emotionality was controlled. Results indicated no significant findings for girls. Boys with higher levels of traditional bullying did not show any deficit in perception accuracy of emotions, but they were prone to identify happiness and fear in faces when a different emotion was expressed; in addition, male cyberbullying was related to greater accuracy in recognizing fear. In terms of the victims, cyber victims had a global problem in recognizing emotions and a specific problem in processing anger and fear. It was concluded that emotion perception accuracy and bias were associated with bullying and victimization for boys not only in traditional settings but also in the electronic ones. Implications of these findings for possible intervention are discussed.

Childhood bullying and social dilemmas

Children who witness bullying often do not defend victims. Bystanders might be reticent to intervene because they are stuck in "social dilemmas." Social dilemmas are situations in which individuals make decisions based on self-interest due to their lack of confidence that others will join with them in decisions that benefit the collective. In this study, the social dilemmas concept, which comes from game theory and social psychology, was applied to bullying for the first time. A total of 292 middle school students at a private residential school in the United States completed surveys about their bullying-related experiences within their residences of 10 to 12 students of the same gender. Multilevel modeling was employed to assess if and how attitudes, group norms, and social dilemmas predict behavior in bullying situations. The findings suggested that both individual and group factors were associated with behavior in bullying situations and that attitudes, group norms, and social dilemmas each made a unique contribution to predicting behavior in bullying situations. Aggr. Behav. 42:97-108, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Dehumanization in children: the link with moral disengagement in bullying and victimization

The current study explored subtle dehumanization-the denial of full humanness-in children, using distinctions of forms (i.e., animalistic vs. mechanistic) and social targets (i.e., friends vs. non-friends). In addition, the link between dehumanization and moral disengagement in bullying and victimization was investigated. Participants were 800 children (7-12 years old) from third to fifth grade classrooms. Subtle animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization toward friends and non-friends were measured with the new Juvenile Dehumanization Measure. Results showed that animalistic dehumanization was more common than mechanistic dehumanization and that non-friends were dehumanized more than friends. The highest levels of dehumanization were found in animalistic form toward non-friends and the lowest levels in mechanistic form toward friends. Both moral disengagement and animalistic dehumanization toward friends were positively associated with bullying. However, moral disengagement was negatively associated with victimization, whereas both animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization toward non-friends were positively associated with victimization. The current findings indicate that children are able to distinguish different forms and targets of dehumanization and that dehumanization plays a distinct role from moral disengagement in bullying and victimization.

School bullying and the mechanisms of moral disengagement

The aim of the present study was to examine to what degree different mechanisms of moral disengagement were related to age, gender, bullying, and defending among school children. Three hundred and seventy-two Swedish children ranging in age from 10 to 14 years completed a questionnaire. Findings revealed that boys expressed significantly higher levels of moral justification, euphemistic labeling, diffusion of responsibility, distorting consequences, and victim attribution, as compared with girls. Whereas boys bullied others significantly more often than girls, age was unrelated to bullying. Moral justification and victim attribution were the only dimensions of moral disengagement that significantly related to bullying. Furthermore, younger children and girls were more likely to defend victims. Diffusion of responsibility and victim attribution were significantly and negatively related to defending, while the other dimensions of moral disengagement were unrelated to defending.

Moral disengagement among children and youth: a meta-analytic review of links to aggressive behavior

A growing body of research has demonstrated consistent links between Bandura's theory of moral disengagement and aggressive behavior in adults. The present meta-analysis was conducted to summarize the existing literature on the relation between moral disengagement and different types of aggressive behavior among school-age children and adolescents. Twenty-seven independent samples with a total of 17,776 participants (aged 8-18 years) were included in the meta-analysis. Results indicated a positive overall effect (r = .28, 95% CI [.23, .32]), supporting the hypothesis that moral disengagement is a significant correlate of aggressive behavior among children and youth. Analyses of a priori moderators revealed that effect sizes were larger for adolescents as compared to children, for studies that used a revised version of the original Bandura scale, and for studies with shared method variance. Effect sizes did not vary as a function of type of aggressive behavior, gender, or publication status. Results are discussed within the extant literature on moral disengagement and future directions are proposed.

Bystander behavior in bullying situations: basic moral sensitivity, moral disengagement and defender self-efficacy

The aim of the present study was to investigate how basic moral sensitivity in bullying, moral disengagement in bullying and defender self-efficacy were related to different bystander behaviors in bullying. Therefore, we examined pathways that linked students' basic moral sensitivity, moral disengagement, and defender self-efficacy to different bystander behaviors in bullying situations. Three hundred and forty-seven teenagers completed a bullying survey. Findings indicated that compared with boys, girls expressed higher basic moral sensitivity in bullying, lower defender self-efficacy and moral disengagement in bullying. Results from the SEM showed that basic moral sensitivity in bullying was negatively related to pro-bully behavior and positively related to outsider and defender behavior, mediated by moral disengagement in bullying, which in turn was positively related to pro-bully behavior and negatively related to outsider and defender behavior. What differed in the relations between outsider and defender behaviors was the degree of defender self-efficacy.

Main and moderated effects of moral cognition and status on bullying and defending

This study analyzed the relations of two dimensions of moral cognition (i.e., acceptance of moral transgression and moral disengagement) and two forms of status in the peer group (i.e., social preference and perceived popularity) with bullying and defending among 235 primary-school children and 305 middle-school early adolescents. Social status was tested as a moderator of the associations between moral cognition and bullying and defending. Participants completed self-reports assessing the two dimensions of moral cognition and peer nominations for status, bullying, and defending. Both acceptance of moral transgression and moral disengagement were associated to bullying among early adolescents only, whereas in childhood moral disengagement was linked to defending among girls. Social status moderated the associations between morality dimensions and bullying and defending. The moderating effects of status were discussed considering status as a magnifying lens for the relations between individual characteristics and social behavior. The results were also discussed with reference to age and gender differences in the associations.

Individual and class moral disengagement in bullying among elementary school children

A cross-sectional study from a sample of 663 elementary school children assessed the four sets of moral disengagement mechanisms conceptualized by Bandura (i.e., cognitive restructuring, minimizing one's agentive role, disregarding/distorting the consequences, blaming/dehumanizing the victim) at both the individual and the class level. Additionally, an analysis of the relations of these mechanisms to pro-bullying behavior was conducted. Multilevel analysis showed a significant relationship between cognitive restructuring and individual pro-bullying behavior. Moreover, between-class variability of pro-bullying behavior was positively related to minimizing one's agentive role and blaming/dehumanizing the victim at the class level. Conversely, class disregarding/distorting the consequences was negatively associated with between-class variation in the outcome behavior. Implications for understanding the role of morality in children's bullying are discussed.

The role of individual correlates and class norms in defending and passive bystanding behavior in bullying: a multilevel analysis

This study investigates possible individual and class correlates of defending and passive bystanding behavior in bullying, in a sample of 1,825 Italian primary school (mean age=10 years 1 month) and middle school (mean age=13 years 2 months) students. The findings of a series of multilevel regression models show that both individual (e.g., provictim attitudes and perceived peer pressure for intervention) and class characteristics (e.g., class provictim attitudes, peer injunctive norms, and descriptive norms) help explain defending and passive bystanding behavior in bullying. These results significantly expand previous findings in this field, by demonstrating the need for a social-ecological approach to the study of the different aspects of bullying. Implications for antibullying programs are discussed.

Repetition, power imbalance, and intentionality: do these criteria conform to teenagers' perception of bullying? A role-based analysis

The criteria that researchers use to classify aggressive behaviour as bullying are 'repetition', 'power imbalance', and 'intent to hurt'. However, studies that have analyzed adolescents' perceptions of bullying find that most adolescents do not simultaneously consider these three criteria. This paper examines adolescents' perceptions of bullying and of the different forms it takes, and whether these perceptions vary according to the teen's role of victim, aggressor, or witness in a bullying situation. The data acquisition instrument was a questionnaire applied to a sample of 2295 teenagers. The results show that none of these three groups considered the criterion of repetition to be important to define bullying. A further conclusion was that both aggressors and witnesses used the criteria of 'power imbalance' and 'intent to hurt' to identify a situation of bullying, although the aggressors placed especial emphasis on the superiority of power over the victim, while the witnesses emphasized the intent to hurt the victim. One noteworthy finding was that victims do not consider the factor 'power imbalance'. The factor that determined their perceptions was the 'intent to hurt'. Finally, some modes of bullying were seen as forms of typical teen social interactions, and the perception depended significantly on the adolescent's role as aggressor, victim, or witness.

Prosocial and antisocial children's perceptions of peers' motives for prosocial behaviours

This study investigated whether peer-nominated prosocial and antisocial children have different perceptions of the motives underlying peers' prosocial actions. Eighty-seven children, aged 10-12 years old, completed peer-nomination measures of social behaviour. On the basis of numbers of social nominations received, a subsample of 51 children (32 who were peer-nominated as 'prosocial', and 18 who were peer-nominated as 'antisocial') then recorded their perceptions of peers' motives for prosocial behaviours. Expressed motives were categorized predominantly into three categories, coinciding with Turiel's (1978) 'moral', 'conventional', and 'personal domains'. Results indicate that children's social reputation is associated with the extent to which they perceive peers' prosocial motives as 'personal' or 'moral', with more prosocial children attributing moral motives, and more antisocial children attributing personal motives. Although traditionally Turiel's domain theory has been used to understand 'antisocial' children's behaviour, the current findings suggest that 'prosocial' children's behaviour may also be related to domains of judgment.

Bullying as strategic behavior: relations with desired and acquired dominance in the peer group

To examine whether bullying is strategic behavior aimed at obtaining or maintaining social dominance, 1129 9- to 12-year-old Dutch children were classified in terms of their role in bullying and in terms of their use of dominance oriented coercive and prosocial social strategies. Multi-informant measures of participants' acquired and desired social dominance were also included. Unlike non-bullying children, children contributing to bullying often were bistrategics in that they used both coercive and prosocial strategies and they also were socially dominant. Ringleader bullies also expressed a higher desire to be dominant. Among non-bullying children, those who tended to help victims were relatively socially dominant but victims and outsiders were not. Generally, the data supported the claim that bullying is dominance-oriented strategic behavior, which suggests that intervention strategies are more likely to be successful when they take the functional aspects of bullying behavior into account.

Predictors of student defenders of peer aggression victims: Empathy and social cognitive factors

Despite wide recognition of the important role of student bystanders in influencing peer aggression in schools, little is currently known about what influences students to intervene in defense of peer aggression victims. This longitudinal study involving 1,167 primarily white adolescents (aged 12—15 years, 613 females) investigated the role of social cognitive factors and empathy as predictors of students defending victims of peer aggression. High levels of collective efficacy beliefs in the ability of students and teachers to work together to stop peer aggression were associated with higher frequency of defending behavior over time. For girls, empathy was also associated with defending over time.

Individual and collective social cognitive influences on peer aggression: exploring the contribution of aggression efficacy, moral disengagement, and collective efficacy

This follow-up study with 1,167 primarily White adolescents (aged 13.45 years at T1, 613 females) examined the impact of self-efficacy for aggression, moral disengagement, and collective efficacy beliefs on peer aggression in schools. Students completed questionnaire measures at the beginning and end of the school year (8 months apart). High aggression efficacy and moral disengagement scores predicted higher frequency of peer aggression over time. Low collective efficacy beliefs regarding the ability of students and teachers to collaboratively act to inhibit peer aggression were also associated with more frequent aggression, although this association was stronger at higher levels of moral disengagement. The findings of this study highlight the need to consider collective efficacy beliefs in conjunction with individual social cognitive processes when seeking to explain aggressive behavior.

Moral disengagement in self-reported and peer-nominated school bullying

This study examined the relation between moral disengagement and different self-reported and peer-nominated positions in school bullying. The aims of this study were to (1) investigate moral disengagement among children for whom self-reported and peer-nominated bully status diverged and (2) compare levels of disengagement among self-reported and peer-nominated pure bullies, pure victims, bully-victims, and children not involved in bullying. A sample of 739 Danish sixth grade and seventh grade children (mean age 12.6) was included in the study. Moral disengagement was measured using a Danish version of the Moral Disengagement Scale and bullying was measured using both self-reports and peer nominations. Results revealed that both self-reported and peer-nominated bullying were related to moral disengagement, and that both pure bullies and bully-victims displayed higher moral disengagement than outsiders. Discrepancies between self-reported and peer-nominated bullying involvement indicates that a person's social reputation has a stronger association with moral disengagement than so far expected. Implications are discussed, highlighting the importance of further research and theory development.

Active defending and passive bystanding behavior in bullying: the role of personal characteristics and perceived peer pressure

This study examined the role of pro-victim attitudes, personal responsibility, coping responses to observations of bullying, and perceived peer normative pressure in explaining defending the victim and passive bystanding behavior in bullying. A total of 462 Italian early adolescents (mean age = 13.4 years, SD = 9 months) participated in the study. The behaviors were measured through two informants: each individual student and the teachers. The findings of a series of hierarchical regressions showed that, regardless of the informant, problem solving coping strategies and perceived peer normative pressure for intervention were positively associated with active help towards a bullied peer and negatively related to passivity. In contrast, distancing strategies were positively associated with passive bystanding, whereas they were negatively associated with teacher-reported defending behavior. Moreover, self-reported defending behavior was positively associated with personal responsibility for intervention, but only under conditions of low perceived peer pressure. Finally, the perception of peer pressure for intervention buffered the negative influence of distancing on passive bystanding tendencies. Future directions are discussed.

Peer and cyber aggression in secondary school students: the role of moral disengagement, hostile attribution bias, and outcome expectancies

This study investigated the relationship between cognitive mechanisms, applied by people to rationalize and justify harmful acts, and engagement in traditional peer and cyber aggression among school children. We examined the contribution of moral disengagement (MD), hostile attribution bias, and outcome expectancies, and we further explored the individual contribution of each MD mechanism. Our aim was to identify shared and unique cognitive factors of the two forms of aggression. Three hundred and thirty-nine secondary school children completed self-report measures that assessed MD, hostile attribution bias, outcome expectancies, and their roles and involvement in traditional and cyber aggression. We found that the MD total score positively related to both forms of peer-directed aggression. Furthermore, traditional peer aggression positively related to children's moral justification, euphemistic language, displacement of responsibility and outcome expectancies, and negatively associated with hostile attribution bias. Moral justification also related positively to cyber aggression. Cyber aggression and cyber victimization were associated with high levels of traditional peer aggression and victimization, respectively. The results suggest that MD is a common feature of both traditional and cyber peer aggression, but it seems that traditional forms of aggression demand a higher level of rationalization or justification. Moreover, the data suggest that the expectation of positive outcomes from harmful behavior facilitates engagement in traditional peer aggression. The differential contribution of specific cognitive mechanisms indicates the need for future research to elaborate on the current findings, in order to advance theory and inform existing and future school interventions tackling aggression and bullying.