Self-blaming attributions and peer victimization: psychometric properties of the scale and relations with bullying roles

• In Event: Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Topic - Social Relationships

Abstract

Attributions, or explanations of events and actions, have gained considerable attention in the peer harassment literature particularly because of their implications for explaining a certain behavior and designing possible intervention programs (Georgiou & Stavrinides, 2008). Attributional processes or inferences about why outcomes occur, constitute a key mediating mechanism that can account for different reactions of both the targets of harassment and their peers (Juvonen & Graham, 2001). To our knowledge, there are no studies evaluating the difference in attribution styles between the different groups involved in bullying, using a validated and multi-dimensional scale that takes into account the three-dimensional taxonomy of attributions: locus (internal and external); stability (stable over time or unstable causes) and controllability (controllable or uncontrollable).
For this reason, the present study aimed (1) to evaluate the psychometric properties of a revised version of self-blaming attributions scale among adolescents, using Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA), and (2) to explore differences among roles in the level of self-blaming attributions by means of testing invariance of the final CFA model. The sample consisted of 1,207 adolescents (54% females), enrolled in the second year of middle school and in the first and second grades of the high schools in Tuscany, Italy. The participants’ age ranged from 11 to 19 years old with a mean age of 14.89 years (SD=1.39). Attributions of victimization experiences were assessed through a vignette presenting a hypothetical victimization incident and Olweus (1996) global key question was assessed for bullying and victimization.
The results showed a multidimensional structure of the scale with three factors and thirteen items with adequate fit indexes (ꭕ² (61) = 305.035; P<.001; CFI=.916; RMSEA=.058; SRMR=.049; AIC=51767.97; BIC=51987.025). The final factors are characterological self-blame, behavioral self-blame and external attribution.
Partial invariance was demonstrated across different roles, highlighting at the level of latent means a difference in the style of characterological attribution which proved higher in the group of victims than in the other roles (M=.260). This means that victims endorsed significantly more characterological self-blaming attributions compared to other roles in response to imagined incidents of peer victimization.
In conclusion, our findings emphasize how victims show biases in their interpretations of social situations, and in particular they tend to attribute the negative experience to internal, stable and uncontrollable causes that depend from internal causes of the person.
Therefore, future interventions may target the maladaptive responses and internalizing problems that arise from such biases in order to limit and contain specific psychological and behavioral consequences.

Authors

• Lisa De Luca, Italy
  Presenting Author

• Benedetta Emanuela Palladino, University of Florence
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ersilia Menesini, University of Florence
  Non-Presenting Author