Defending Victims When Bullying is Normative: An Individual and Social Network Approach

• In Event: 2-213 - Understanding Childhood and Early Adolescent Victimization: Impact of Classroom Norms

Integrative Statement

Background: Although most children do not approve of bullying and would like to help victims (Boulton, Trueman, & Flemington, 2002; Rigby & Johnson, 2006; Rigby & Slee, 1991), defending victims is still relatively uncommon (Salmivalli, 2010). One explanation is that potential defenders (bystanders) may be discouraged to intervene because they might fear to become the next victim (Pozzoli, Gini, & Vieno, 2012; Pozzili & Gini, 2010), particularly in a classroom context where bullying is normative (Meter & Card, 2015). Motivations for defending may not only be guided by individual and contextual factors but may also be shaped by interpersonal factors (Thornberg et al., 2012), such as social evaluating, for example liking or disliking the victim (Meter & Card, 2015). This paper investigated the extent to which children defend victims by whom they are liked or disliked in a classroom where bullying is normative, with higher degrees of bullying, reflecting descriptive norms (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955; Cialdini, Reno, & Kallgren, 1990).

Methods: Classrooms were drawn from the first wave of KiVa (collected in May 2012), a program aimed to reduce school bullying among children in elementary education (8-12 years) in the Netherlands (e.g., Huitsing et al., 2018). For the current study, a sample of 48 classrooms (1,272 students) in the control condition containing defending nominations (“Who defends you when you are bullied?”) and liking (“Who do you dislike?”) and disliking (“Who do you dislike?”) are available. Effects of classroom bullying norms on defending were examined in two different ways: an individual approach (multilevel analysis; Bates et al., 2015) and a social network approach (ERGMs; Wang et al., 2009) where each classroom was analyzed separately with bivariate social network analysis and summarized in a meta-analysis (Viechtbauer, 2010).

Results: Results of analyses of the classroom-wide nominations using multilevel Poisson regression analysis in Table 1 shows that children who were more liked by victims defended victims at higher rates, and this was stronger in a classroom with a higher degree of bullying (see Model 3). In addition, results of analyses of the classroom-wide networks using exponential random graph models (ERGMs) in Table 2 shows that children defended victims who liked them (see dyadic multivariate parameters in Model 1), but not victims who disliked them (see dyadic multivariate parameters in Model 2). There was no indication that this was more or less likely in a classroom where bullying is normative (no significant main effects of bullying norms).

Conclusions: Together, these findings suggest that children who are liked by victims of bullying are not discouraged to defend them in a classroom context where bullies occupy a dominant position in the group.

Authors

• Ashwin Rambaran, University of Groningen
  Presenting Author

• Jan Kornelis Dijkstra, University of Groningen
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marijtje van Duijn, University of Groningen
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rene Veenstra, University of Groningen
  Non-Presenting Author