PSYU3339 - Aggression and Bullying

What is the prevalence of cyber bullying?

Despite public concern about cyber bullying, research shows a lower prevalence than for other bullying types.

What is the KiVa program and how does it differ from most other programs?

Developed in Finland, the KiVa program provides professionally developed materials, includes internet-based resources as part of the instructional materials, and places a stronger role on bystanders, aiming to increase their ability and motivation to defend the victim.

What are the two types of bystanders as per Bussey's (2021) Multifaceted Model?

The two types are active bystanders, who can help the victim or the bully, and passive bystanders, who mostly observe the bullying incident.

Social Cognitive Theory of Aggression

Aggression is influenced and regulated by socio-cognitive factors such as modeling, enactive experience, direct tuition, outcome expectations, and self-efficacy beliefs.

General Aggression Model (GAM) (Anderson & Bushman, 2002)

An integrative framework for understanding aggression, considering social, cognitive, personality, developmental, and biological factors.

Cognitive Coping Self-Efficacy Strategies

Avoid self-blame: Belief in one's ability to avoid blaming oneself for the victimization. Victim-role disengagement: Ability to detach from the victim role by focusing on positive attributes and not taking victimization personally.

Bullying Involvement Roles

Bully: active, leader-like behavior. Reinforcer of the bully: incites the bully, provides an audience. Assistant of the bully: active, but more follower than leader. Defender of the victim: sticks up for or consoles the victim. Outsider: does nothing in bullying situations. Victim: the target of bullying.

School Factors Related to Victimization

Bullying not taken seriously, lack of support when bullying is reported, and no clear procedures for handling bullying.

Definition of Bullying (Including Cyber Bullying) - Olweus, 1995

Bullying occurs when a student is exposed repeatedly over time to negative actions from one or more other students. There is an imbalance in power between the bully and the victim. Bullying is a sub-component of aggression. It involves intent, repetition, power.

Who studied the moderating roles of empathic concern and perspective taking in attenuating the association between moral disengagement practices and overt aggression?

Bussey, Quinn, & Dobson (2015) studied this. They found that higher levels of empathic concern and perspective taking weakened the association between moral disengagement proneness and aggression.

Definition of Coping Self-Efficacy (CSE)

CSE refers to one's perceived ability to mobilize the motivation, cognitive resources, and actions needed to exercise control over negative events

What is the finding of Barchia & Bussey (2011) about children with high moral disengagement scores?

Children who scored highly on moral disengagement were more aggressive over time (8 months) than children with lower moral disengagement scores, even after controlling initial aggression levels.

Drive Theory of Aggression

Freud's hydraulic model suggests that aggression is a cathartic response to built-up emotional tension. Supported by Dollard, Doob, Miller, Mowrer, and Sears.

Relationship of Coping Self-Efficacy to Psychological Outcomes

Greater victimization results in less use of CSE strategies. More use of CSE strategies results in less anxiety, depression, and acting out. Cognitive CSE strategies reduce anxiety and depression. Avoiding aggressive behavior leads to less acting out.

Peer Factors Related to Victimization

Include status in peer group, minority status, few friends, and poor quality friendships.

Types of Aggression

Includes hostile and instrumental aggression, angry and non-angry aggression. Aggression pertains to behavior, hostility to attitude, and anger to emotional arousal. Assertiveness is also related.

Family Factors Related to Victimization

Includes overprotected children, enmeshed relationships, and poor parent-child communication patterns.

Personal Factors Related to Victimization

Includes physical weakness and behavioral reactions like passivity and provocativeness.

Definition of Aggression (Bandura, 1973)

Injurious and destructive behavior that is socially defined as aggressive based on various factors. Factors may reside in the evaluator rather than in the performer, involving intent and subjective social labeling.

What are the mechanisms of moral disengagement?

Mechanisms of moral disengagement include moral justification, euphemistic language, advantageous comparison, displacement of responsibility, diffusion of responsibility, distorting the consequences of action, dehumanization, and attribution of blame.

What is moral disengagement in relation to bullying?

Moral disengagement enables the selective activation and disengagement of internal controls, thereby permitting different types of conduct with the same moral standards. Research on moral disengagement has shown that bullies and aggressive children score higher on moral disengagement than do victims, nonaggressive children, and children not involved in bullying.

Coping Self-Efficacy and Cyber Victimization

Most domains of CSE and emotion dysregulation partially mediate the relationship between cyber victimization and depression, and fully mediate the relationship between cyber victimization and social anxiety.

Factors that Attenuate the Negative Psychological Impact of Victimization

Personal factors such as coping skills and coping self-efficacy can mitigate the negative impact of victimization. Some coping strategies lead to better adjustment than others.

Types of Peer Victimization

Physical (hitting, kicking), verbal (name-calling), relational (rumors, exclusion), and cyber (mobile phones, internet).

Behavioral Coping Self-Efficacy Strategies

Proactive behavior: Belief in one's ability to enact behaviors like support seeking, problem solving, assertiveness, and conflict resolution. Avoiding aggressive behavior: Belief in one's ability to forgive, avoid fighting back and seeking revenge.

Participant Roles in Bullying - Salmivalli, et al., 1996

Roles include bully, reinforcer of the bully, assistant of the bully, victim, defender of the victim, and outsider.

Eagan & Perry (1998) Findings on Victimisation

Self-perceived social competence within the peer group can influence victimisation. Low self-regard and abusive treatments can create a vicious cycle. Anxiety is both a cause and consequence of victimization.

What are the debates about the causes of bullying?

Sutton, Smith, & Swettenham (1999) challenged the idea that biases or deficiencies in information processing characterized bullies and instead argued that they are skilled manipulators. Crick & Dodge (1999) proposed that highly aggressive children and bullies suffer from cognitive deficits and have a limited awareness of the effects on others of their aggressive interactions.

Role of the Victim in Aggression

Targets often include children who cry when victimized or are anxious. Pain cues can be gratifying to those highly aggressive. Children's self-doubts can contribute to their victimization.

What were the results of the evaluation of the KiVa program?

The results revealed that self- and peer-reported bullying and victimization were reduced in the intervention compared with the control. Students in the intervention schools assisted and reinforced the bully less and believed that they were more able to intervene in a bullying episode.

What did Moxey & Bussey (2020) study aim to develop and investigate?

They aimed to develop a questionnaire to measure aggressive and constructive forms of bystander intervention (the Styles of Bystander Intervention Scale), and investigate the influence of moral disengagement on these behaviors.

What did Gini, Pozzoli, & Bussey (2014, 2015) find about collective moral disengagement?

They found that collective moral disengagement at the classroom level significantly predicted bullying beyond individual level moral disengagement.

What were the findings of Clark & Bussey (2020) related to cyberbullying defending?

They found that defending self-efficacy and empathic self-efficacy were related to cyberbullying defending.

Information Processing Model of Aggression (Dodge & Crick, 1994)

This model posits that aggression results from steps: encoding social cues, interpreting them, formulating social goals, generating problem-solving strategies, evaluating and selecting a response, and enacting the response.

Ethological Theory of Aggression

This theory focuses on aggression in the context of agonistic interactions.

Trait Theory of Aggression

This theory posits that aggression is based on personality traits, which show consistency and stability.

Four Coping Self-Efficacy Domains for Peer Victimization (Singh & Bussey, 2009)

Two cognitive domains: Self-efficacy for avoiding self-blame and victim-role disengagement. Two behavioral domains: Self-efficacy for proactive behavior and self-efficacy for avoiding aggressive behavior.

Factors Influencing Depressive Victimization Outcomes

Victimization can lead to more rumination, which in turn leads to greater depression (Barchia and Bussey, 2010).

What is the focus of interventions in terms of social cognitive process?

- Changing underlying social cognitive processes. - Tackling moral disengagement. - Boosting defending self-efficacy. - Encouraging empathic self-efficacy.

What are some reasons for the success of teacher interventions in victimization?

- Mobilization of bystanders is a crucial social process for a successful victimization intervention - Interventions are most effective when students believe both their teacher and peers disapprove of victimization -When teachers create an autonomy-supportive classroom climate, student bystanders gain the support and backing they need to adopt the defender role without risking retaliation from the bully or rejection from their peers

What are the characteristics of effective interventions against bullying?

- Whole-school approach. - Address all forms of bullying, including physical, relational, verbal, and cyber bullying. - Address all bullying behaviors, encompassing bully, victim, and bystander roles. - Individualized intervention, which helps to avoid stigma and reduce the "healthy context paradox" (Salmivalli, 2018), where a highly victimized child feels worse after an intervention because there are fewer victims in the class.

What are the mental health outcomes of cyber bullying?

Cyberbullying impacts children and adolescents' mental health. Studies have found that the more adolescents experience cyber bullying, the higher their depression and it also increases the risk of suicide.

Psychological Outcomes of Peer Victimization

Depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, acting out, school refusal, loneliness, and suicide ideation.

What is electronic/cyber bullying?

Electronic bullying, also known as cyber bullying and online bullying, is bullying through email, in a chat room, on a website, SMS messaging, social media, and images sent on a smartphone. (Kowalski, Limber, & Agatston, 2008; Kowalski et al. 2015)