Poster #222 - A Social-Ecological Analysis of Exploitative Personality and Adolescent Bullying

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Social Relationships

Integrative Statement

Multiple adverse social environments may facilitate adolescent bullying perpetration (Hong & Espelage, 2012). Individuals with antisocial personality styles may in particular be more likely to perceive and respond to these social contexts with bullying behavior. A lack of empathy, or the emotional understanding of the emotional state of others, has previously been associated with child bullying (e.g., Joliffe & Farrington, 2006). However, traits related to a tendency for predatory exploitation have recently been associated with adolescent bullying (Book et al., 2012; Reijntjes et al., 2016). The latter finding supports the notion that bullying can serve an adaptive social function as youth get older (Vaillancourt et al., 2010; Volk et al., 2014). However, few researchers have simultaneously examined these traits along with the broader social ecology of bullying across adolescence. Therefore, the associations between empathy, exploitation, and bullying were examined with broader school, peer, and family contexts across the first three years of high school. It was expected that exploitation, but not empathy, would be associated with bullying perpetration across adolescence. It was also expected that exploitation, but not empathy, would indirectly link broader social environments to bullying perpetration.

Participants were recruited from an on-going longitudinal study of a representative sample of youth in a school district in Canada. For the purposes of this study, the three waves corresponding to the first three years of high school (Grade 9, Grade 10, and Grade 11 in Canada) were used for a total sample of 560 adolescents (55% Girls; 64.3% White). Adolescents completed self-report measures on bullying, empathy, exploitation, self-perceived popularity, and school bonding, and parents reported on family functioning.

Two developmental cascade models were conducted. The first was a Personality Model used to examine whether empathy or exploitation had longitudinal associations with bullying. As predicted, both empathy and exploitation had concurrent associations with bullying, but only exploitation positively predicted bullying across the first three years of high school (Figure 1). Following the results of the Personality Model, a second cascade model was conducted to examine whether broader social contexts (family functioning, school bonding, self-perceived popularity) were associated with bullying indirectly through exploitation (Figure 2). As expected, there was a significant indirect effect. Higher Grade 9 self-perceived popularity was associated with higher Grade 10 exploitation, which was then associated with higher Grade 11 bullying (B = .027, SE = .008, β = .081, 95% CI [.011, .044]).

These findings suggest that as adolescents get older, bullying may be less related to a lack of emotional response that is often evident in younger children. Instead, adolescents may be employing bullying as an adaptive strategy within environmental contexts that they can exploit. In particular, higher perceived social status may be one feature that adolescents may take advantage of when bullying. These findings highlight the importance of integrating across social ecological contexts for anti-bullying efforts, including taking into consideration the exploitative traits of socially powerful adolescents.

Authors

• Ann H. Farrell, University of Ottawa
  Presenting Author

• Anthony Volk, Brock University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tracy Vaillancourt, University of Ottawa
  Non-Presenting Author