Within-Person Reciprocal Associations between Peer Victimization and Need for Approval

• In Event: Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Topic - Social Relationships

Abstract

Social belonging has been identified as a fundamental human need that scaffolds how individuals respond to social cues (Gardner et al., 2005). According to the Belonging Regulation model, an innate social monitoring system (SMS) regulates belonging needs. Threats to these needs trigger activation of the SMS, resulting in heightened attunement to cues indicating acceptance or rejection (Gardner et al., 2005). During childhood and early adolescence, the peer group serves as a primary context of socialization. Thus, threats to peer group belonging likely activate the SMS, thereby enhancing sensitivity to cues of peer approval and disapproval. Consistent with this idea, the present study tested the hypothesis that exposure to peer victimization would predict heightened need for approval (NFA) over time. In particular, we hypothesized that victimization would increase the extent to which youths’ self-worth is based on peer approval, such that they would derive enhanced self-worth in the face of peer approval (approach-oriented NFA; NFAapp) but diminished self-worth in the face of peer disapproval (avoidance-oriented NFA; NFAavoid; Rudolph et al., 2005). We also examined whether a heightened NFA would predict increased exposure to peer victimization over time.

636 youth (338 girls, 298 boys; M age at Wave 1 = 7.94 years, SD = 0.37) were followed from 2nd to 7th grade. To assess exposure to peer victimization, youth and teachers completed a revised version (Rudolph et al., 2011) of the Social Experiences Questionnaire (Crick & Grotpeter, 1996). To assess NFAapp and NFAavoid, youth completed the Need for Approval Questionnaire (Rudolph et al., 2005).

To disaggregate within-person versus between-person effects, an autoregressive latent trajectory model with structured residuals (Berry & Willoughby, 2017) was estimated. A multi-group model yielded no significant gender differences and therefore data were collapsed across boys and girls. Results revealed that peer victimization at each wave predicted a subsequent increase in NFAavoid (β = .06, p = .006) and a subsequent decrease in NFAapp at the next wave (β = -.05, p = .03). In addition, whereas NFAavoid predicted within-person increases in peer victimization (β = .15, p < .001), NFAapp did not predict changes in peer victimization over time (β = -.03, p = .28).

The present research supports the idea that exposure to peer victimization may serve as a threat to youths’ need to belong that heightens sensitivity to peer disapproval; however, peer victimization seems to weaken youths’ sensitivity to peer approval. This pattern of findings suggests that it may be difficult for victimized youth to recover from diminished self-esteem, perhaps explaining the long-term effects of early peer victimization even beyond subsequent peer victimization. Moreover, these results support a self-perpetuating cycle, wherein attunement to peer disapproval increases the likelihood that peers will target youth for future victimization. These findings suggest that encouraging youth to build their self-worth on factors other than peer approval may help to minimize the adverse short- and long-term effects of peer victimization and interrupt the victimization cycle.

Authors

• Jianjie Xu, Beijing Normal University
  Presenting Author

• Wendy Troop-Gordon, Auburn University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Karen Rudolph, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Non-Presenting Author