Poster #234 - Who Can Successfully Defend Victimized Children?

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Social Relationships

Integrative Statement

Bullying is one of the most troubling social problems currently facing schools, often leading to social, emotional, physical, and psychological consequences for victims. Many current bullying intervention programs focus on increasing bystander defense of the victim (e.g., KiVa; Salmivalli, Kärnä & Poskiparta, 2010), but we know little about the social consequences for defenders, the success of defending for preventing future victimization, and qualities of children most likely to be successful defenders. In this study, we contrast the effects of defender popularity and liking relative to bully popularity and liking on deterrence of the bully from further bullying the victim and retaliating against the defender, and positive and negative relationship outcomes for the defender. Popularity and liking differentials favoring defenders were expected to produce more positive outcomes than differentials favoring bullies.
Participants were 222 children (118 boys) aged 10 to 14 years from 19 classes in 6 schools. Children completed several questions about a bully-victim-defender triadic relationship in their classroom. Popularity ratings (1 to 5) of the bully were subtracted from the popularity rating of the defender within the triad, yielding scores ranging from -4 to +4. Relative liking scores were similarly created based on reports of how much the defender and bully were liked by children in the class. Based on a factor analysis of social outcomes for defenders, two positive social consequence items (gained friends, gained popularity) were averaged (α = .82), and three negative outcome items (lost friends, lost popularity, lost clique) were averaged (α = .68). Two victim outcome items (“did the defender stop the bully?”, “did the bully still pick on the victim?”) were combined to reflect continued bullying of the victim (α = .63). A single item assessed bully retaliation against the defender.
Results of regression analyses (see Table 1) reveal that successful defense of the victim and avoidance of retaliation occurred when defenders were more popular than the bully (but not when they were better liked). However, positive relationship outcomes for the defender occurred when defenders were better liked than the bully (but not when they were more popular).
The present findings have practical implications for bullying intervention programs that encourage defending. To successfully and safely defend a victim of bullying, a defender should be more popular than the bully rather than better liked. Greater popularity apparently carries more power to control the behavior of subordinate peers who bully, perhaps because more popular children have a large network of potential backers, and also because they control more resources. However, the power element of popularity may not be conducive to personal relationship benefits. Defenders who are better liked than the bully may accrue personal and relationship benefits from their heroic behavior, but without the social power of a popularity advantage, may pose little threat to the bully.

Authors

• Kunio Hessel, Western University
  Presenting Author

• Lynne Zarbatany, University of Western Ontario
  Non-Presenting Author

• Chris Sciberas, Western University
  Non-Presenting Author