Cross-cultural Analysis of Attributions About Peer Victimization in US and Korean Adolescents

• In Event: Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Topic - Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Abstract

Youth’s attributions about peers’ behaviors have been widely examined as a mechanism that may explain how and why victimization and internalizing problems are associated in the United States (e.g., Graham et al., 2009; Abramson et al., 1989). However, attributions about peer victimization have not yet been examined in Korea. Based on the causal dimensions in Weiner’s Attribution Theory (1986), the following three types of attributions were considered: characterological self-blame (CSB), behavioral self-blame (BSB), and externalization of the blame (EXT). Findings in the U.S. suggest that youth who are more highly victimized by peers report more CSB (Schacter et al., 2015; Graham & Juvonen, 1998)., Whether Korean youth who are highly victimized by peers also tend toward characterological self-blame is unknown. The current study addressed the gap in the literature by investigating cross-cultural similarities and differences in adolescents’ attributions about negative peer experiences and their relation to victimization.
Participants were 732 adolescents in 7th-8th grades from South Korea and the United States (62.8% Korean, 44.3% male, Mage= 13.64, SD= .61). Participants read hypothetical vignettes depicting them as targets of peer victimization and then rated how much they would make certain attributions, including CSB (α= .815, e.g., “If I were a cooler kid, this wouldn’t happen to me”), BSB (α=.830, e.g., “I shouldn’t have been there” ), and externalization of blame (α= .788, e.g., “These kids pick on everybody” ) on a Likert scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (a lot). Participants also completed a self-report measure of peer victimization (α= .995).
The results of multigroup confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) showed that the attribution model fit the data well; factor loadings were equivalent between the two groups and the model met criteria for partial scalar invariance, demonstrating that the items’ intercepts were partially invariant across countries (see Table 1). Findings of the latent mean comparison between countries showed that Korean adolescents had significantly lower rates of CSB (-.339, p< .01), BSB (-.176, p< .05), and EXT (-.283, p< .01) compared to American adolescents. Paths from victimization to three attributions were also examined and compared between countries. Paths from victimization to BSB and EXT could be constrained to be equal across countries without significantly decreasing the model fit (∆CFI < .01). However the path from victimization to CSB varied across countries. Only for U.S. adolescents was victimization related to CSB.
Overall, the multigroup CFA results indicate that how Korean and American conceptualize the three attributions are similar. However, there are cross-cultural differences in how victimization is linked with different attributions about victimization. Although the results are concurrent with past findings of the victimization-CSB link in the US sample, the same link was not present in the Korean sample, suggesting that victimization experiences have different implications for attributions about the self in Korea and the U.S.

Authors

• Joo Young Yang, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
  Presenting Author

• Kristina Lynne McDonald, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Hannah Lee
  Non-Presenting Author

• Miyeon Park, None
  Non-Presenting Author