Peer Relationship

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Peer Relationship

“Humans are perhaps the most social animals” (Emery et al. 2007 Phil Trans Roy Soc B)

So unsurprisingly peer relation sare one of the most important factors determining life success.

– E.g. scoring 1 standard deviation higher on a peer problems scale at 16 years leads to a 33% higher chance of developing Metabolic Syndrome (diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity together) at age 43 (Gustafsson et al. 2012 PLOS One).

– We will see later how important peer relations are for other measures, such as academic success.

– Between 5% and 10% of children experience chronic peer relationship difficulties, such as rejection and harassment (Boivin 2005 Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development).

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Role of peers important even in Harlow’s (in) famous monkey social deprivation experiments

The negative effects of raising without a mother are partially alleviated by peer interaction

Harlow (1969) Advances in the Study of Behavior

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The stability of early social behaviour, even into middle childhood

In one study, aggression towards peers at 2 years correlated with externalising problems at 4 years (r = .32).

In a second study, peer-interaction in child-care context rated by observers in toddlers and longitudinally by teachers at 9 years.

– Aggression in toddlers correlated negatively with prosocial behaviour at 9 years (r = -.33).

– Complex social play in toddlers correlated negatively with aggression at 9 years (r = -.55).

Howes & Phillipsen (1998) Soc Dev, Rubin et al. (2003) Dev Psy.

Withdrawnbehaviourisalsostable–withdrawn toddlers tend to become shy preschoolers.

“Aggression in the toddler years is often thought to be normative. However, closer inspection of the literature on peer relations shows that, although many toddlers may use force occasionally, the frequent, proactive and dysregulated use of aggression in early life is a minority phenomenon that may index risk for later externalising problems”.

Hay et al. (2004) J Child Psychol Psychiatry

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One reason for stability of behaviour with peers can be somewhat constant environment of the family

children from troubled families will tend to have greater difficulty interacting with peers.

One study (Hay et al. 2011 Psych Sci) even shows that these effects are emerging by 12 months of age

Given the importance of family for many issues, are relations between childhood peer problems and adult problems actually causal?

Woodward et al. (2000 J Child Psych) control for many factors and still find clear effects.

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Peer interactions begin early

Crying is contagious from birth and throughout the first year (Geangu et al. 2010 Infant Behav Dev).

This is seen as a rudimentary form of non- cognitive empathy known as affective contagion.

Both aggressive interactions and peaceful co-playing are seen between toddlers.

The general point holds that toddlers very readily engage in interaction which is fundamentally social.

– E.g. over half of 21-month-olds observed in object disputes used communication with the peer as part of the attempted resolution (Hay & Ross 1982 Child Dev).

Semi-naturalistic longitudinal observation of peer-dyads (Eckerman et al. 1989 Child Dev).

Note that this rapid increase in peer- interaction parallels cognitive improvements in understanding of others.

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Reciprocity, direct and indirect: Nowak & Sigmund (2005) Nature

Direct reciprocity begins early

From late in the second year, children are more likely to share with other children who first shared with them (e.g. Levitt 1985 Dev Psy).

At this age they even take into account intentionality when determining whether to reciprocate. Unwilling ≠ unable (Dunfield & Kuhlmeier 2010 Psych Sci).

Do we think these children are “applying a principle”?

-Probably not. It’s probably about liking those who are nice.

Toddlers will help the adult who previously tried to help them – even if it was unsuccessfully (Dunfield & Kuhlmeier)

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The very complex sociocognitive demands of reputation based reciprocity

“We argue that the intricate complexity of indirect reciprocity provided the selective mould for human language and human intelligence” (Nowak & Sigmund).

This is one form of the social intelligence hypothesis.

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Preschooler’s strong tendency to tattle

In two preschools in Northern Ireland, “tattling represented the majority of talk about peers’ behaviour to third parties”.

Tattling is mainly to authorities rather than peers, but is clearly related to gossip.

– Tattling reduces after preschool, gossip increases. – Similarly to gossip, tattling may represent “indirect aggression”. Dominant children tattle more.

Ingram & Bering (2010) Child Dev

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Measuring reputation/peer-acceptance in children

• Standard sociometric measures

– Each child presented with a class list or class photo and asked to nominate

children they like to associate with

children they do

not associate with

Other variations

(e.g. who gets on well with others)

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Popular children

Many positive nominations, few negative

– Popular PROSOCIAL and popular ANTISOCIAL children.

Note that the friendship concept leading to nomination changes a lot with time:

– Preschool friendship

Whoever they recently played with • Quite inclusive but unstable

– School age friendship

Based on an understanding of mutual trust • More exclusive but more stable

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Rejected children

Many negative nominations, few positive

Rejected aggressive children

– Often deficit in perspective taking (ToM)

Rejectedwithdrawnchildren – Often shy

Neglected children

Few positive or negative nominations

– Unlike rejected children, typically do not differ much from popular children in social skills.

– The main characteristic is lower motivation for interaction.

– This category less stable.

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Sociometric status and friendship quality

• Note they are not the same

– Quantity ≠ Quality

– Nominations not necessarily mutual

• Having just one good friend major protective factor against risks associated with low sociometric status

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Social problem solving: the information processing model (Crick & Dodge 1994 Psych Bulletin)

Focussing not just on competent behaviour but on the cognitive skills necessary to generate competent behaviour

1 and 2: Notice and interpret social cues

A wide range of level of cognitive abilities involved

Lower, e.g. joint visual attention, imitation – Higher, e.g. theory of mind

3: Formulate social goals

Children with poor peer relations often appear to have

more egoistic social goals (or have more trouble inhibiting them)

• E.g. satisfying impulses (problems sharing)

• Getting even rather than negotiating and reconciling

Probably the prime determinant for successful peer relations is prosocial behaviour (implying prosocial goals?).

4 and 5: Generate and evaluate strategies

– This requires good understanding of others’ minds.

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Joint attention (JA) in infancy

Triadic interaction: alternation of gaze

These are examples of behaviour revealing joint attention – the tendency to deliberately and knowingly share attention with others

Longitudinal correlates of early joint attention

Pointing at 12 months positively associated with social competence at 30 months

All forms of JA at 12 months negatively associated with externalising behaviour at 30 months

Controlled for temperament, cognition and language, and demographic variables

Vaughan Van Hecke et al. (2007) Child Dev

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Affect as part of joint attention

An anticipatory smile as part a triadic interaction

Anticipatorysmilingat9-months is associated

with social competence at 30 months (r = .48).

Reactive smiling is not associated (r = .09).

Anticipatory smiling is argued to reveal expectation of the triadic interaction whereas reactive smiling results from a simpler, earlier developing, dyadic process.

Parlade et al. (2009) Infant Behav Dev

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The importance of imitation for early interaction

Semi-naturalistic longitudinal observation of peer- dyads (Eckerman et al. 1989 Child Dev).

Subsequently replicated cross-culturally.

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Imitation gives way to more complementary behaviour

Imitation remains an important skill for learning new behaviours, but must be carefully deployed as children don’t always like “copy-cats”.

Camaioni (1991) Early Child Dev & Care

The importance of imitation for early interaction

Imitation not been directly linked to peer relations but one would expect a causal role (Hay et al. 2004) given:

These results showing its importance in early peer interactions

The fact that imitation (unconsciously) increases liking in adults (Chartrand & Bargh 1999 J Pers Soc Psych)

- Children have a preferential tendency to imitate peers and older children, rather than younger children

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Problems with interpretation of social cues: Hostile attribution bias

The increased tendency to interpret ambiguous behaviour in terms of hostility.

Tested by the presentation of filmed vignettes which children are asked to interpret.

Hostile attribution bias greater in rejected children, and leads to greater reactive aggression.

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Social rejection and aggressive behaviour – a vicious cycle

The stress of rejection leads to reactive aggression – the type most likely to leads to rejection, (Dodge et al. (2003) Child Dev)

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The effects of prosocial behaviour on sociometric status – experimental manipulation

415 9- to 12-year-olds were randomly assigned to groups who had to either record three locations visited each week for four weeks, or three random acts of kindness they performed.

After four weeks, children performing kinds acts had gained on average 1.5 positive peer- nominations, significantly more than the control group.

Layous et al. (2012) PLOS One

The effects of prosocial behaviour on sociometric status – real world behaviour

Prosocial behaviour allows children to create the type of positive social environment which is conducive to all types of success, including academic (c.f. Vygotsky).

General point: prosocial behaviour is of clear benefit to the self.

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Theory of mind and peer-relations

ToM -> popularity link mediated by prosocial behaviour

Methods point: note that the cross-lagged design allows causal inferences to be more confidently drawn despite correlational design.

Caputi et al.’s (2012) results explicable by both self- interested and other-interested processes.

Better ToM -> Better understanding of others’ needs

– > better ability to feel sympathetic concern and better ability to help appropriately

but also

– > better ability to strategically target help in expectation of personal gain

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Prosocial behaviour, theory of mind, and proximate and ultimate mechanisms

• Ultimate/functional

– As prosocial behaviour is beneficial to the self, the functional basis is clear.

• Proximate/mechanistic basis

In adults, those who spend money on others are happier than those who spend money on themselves (Survey study and experimental manipulation, Dunn et al., 2008, Science).

Children then?

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Are children spontaneously prosocial because of genuine prosocial sentiment?

Change in sympathetic arousal seen in two year olds when someone helped, irrespective of whether child or third-party did the helping (Hepach et al. 2012 Psych Science).

Helping at stage two after adults gave praise, reward, or were neutral in response to helping at stage 1: Rewards actually undermine prosocial behaviour!

Warneken & Tomasello 2008 Dev Psy

A role for socialisation of empathy: Brownell et al. (2013) Infancy

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Do children use prosocial behaviour as a tool?

Five-year-olds are more likely to be generous when sharing, if the child they share with can see how they share (Leimgruber et al. 2012 PLOS One).

Five-year-olds share more and steal less when watched by a peer (Engelmann et al. 2012 PLOS One).

Cleaner fish manage their reputations (Pinto et al 2011)

Even unconscious perception of eyes can lead to increased generosity in adults (Haley & Fessler 2005, Evol Hum Behav).

The link between ToM and peer-relations is strong in school-age children, but hardly present in preschoolers.

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Can preschoolers think strategically of self-interest when sharing?

Rules of a game for two adults and a child

Every turn each participant buys one egg from a token machine.

The egg has one or two sweets.

You always keep one sweet, but if you get two you give one away.

Kenward et al. (2015) Cognition

The catch: one adult is rich (in tokens), one is poor.

Four-year-olds give significantly more sweets to the rich experimenter (p < .05)

One said: ”You don’t have any sweets so I’m not sharing with you”

After the game the experimenters rush away, and the poor experimenter ”accidentally” knocks over the rich experimenter’s token cup. Roughly half the participants help by picking up the tokens.

Children who don’t spontaneously help share more strategically.

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What about strategic sharing with peers?

Even 1- and 2-year-olds shared with peers in a observed structured situation (Hay et al. 1991 Dev Psych).

2-years-olds actually shared less than 1 year-olds less in response to requests from peers.

– But unlike 1 year olds, they are more likely to share when a duplicate object is available.

ConsistentwithWarneken&Tomasello’s (2009 Brit J Psych) contention that a general prosocial orientation begins early, which gradually becomes more selective.

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The bistrategic route to success

Preschoolers who achieve high social status and high popularity tend to be bistrategic

– Coercive behaviour (aggression, threats) is mixed with prosocial behaviour

It is argued that these children control resources using coercive behaviour but repair damaged relationships using prosocial behaviour

– Reconciliation rates after conflict correlate with dominance.

Roseth et al. (2011) Soc Dev

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Preschoolers high in coercive and prosocial behaviour have similar dominance status and success in resource control

Teachers rate social dominance

Preschoolers tested in pairs to see who gets the primary role in a game with a boring secondary role, e.g.:

Prosocial and coercive behaviour measured during game

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Bistrategic preschoolers are similarly popular to prosocial preschoolers but achieve greater resource control

Hawley (2003) J Exp Child Psych

I even found that in Swedish preschoolers, the most competitive children were the most popular.

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Fundamental conclusions regarding aggressive and prosocial behaviour

To a great extent in preschoolers, and to some extent in older children, it is not presence of coercive/aggressive behaviour which leads to poor peer relations, but absence of prosocial behaviour.

It seems highly likely that a great deal of prosocial behaviour is quite deliberately strategically deployed in order to benefit the self.

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The risk of stability of early aggressive behaviour is worse with poor behavioural control

Undercontrol: non-compliance in a “don’t touch the toy” task. Rubin et al. (2003) Dev Psy.

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Behavioural flexibility and cooperation are correlated: Bonino & Cattelino (1999) Int J Behav Dev

7-year-olds have to colour in drawings but their pencils are tied together.

– Liable to produce conflict, but only possible with cooperation.

Correlations between behavioural flexibility (measured with Wisconsin Card Sort Task) and the following variables in the cooperation task

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Language skills are very important for peer relations

How language is used is of great importance

3- to 5-year-olds’ verbal interactions observed in preschool

Positive verbal responses to others comments strongly related to social status.

Status affects communication style - children who aren’t liked begin to make non-directed verbal initiations, perhaps because being generally ignored is less painful than being overtly rejected.

The strength of causal conclusions is improved by the longitudinal design, but still not completely clear.

Kemple et al. (1992) Merrill-Palmer Quart

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We should also acknowledge the role of non-social factors in determining peer relations

Vannatta et al. (2009) Int J Behav Dev

Appearance

Athleticism

Academic competence

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Conclusions

Good peer-relations are very important for future life success

– Especially an issue because peer-relations have moderately high stability so implications are serious for early poor peer-relations

Very many cognitive skills are important for peer relations

– Basic socio-cognitive skills like joint attention, EF, ToM, language, etc.

Thebehaviourswhichpredictgoodpeerrelations are much more than just being nice

– For example, aggressive behaviour can lead to social dominance, which itself leads to good peer relations

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Bullying and moral reasoning

What’s morality? What is it for? Why should we be moral?

Morality is for being successful in our dealings with other people

– A moral sense directly benefits the individual by motivating them to behave in a way which is more likely to lead to positive treatment by others

– The moral sense directly affects the prosperity of the whole of society, and it has been argued that cultural and/or natural selection operating on groups has, therefore, lead to morality

– Remember the function/mechanism distinction: just because morality has these functions, doesn’t mean people are thinking about it in these somewhat cynical ways

Moral dumbfounding (Haidt 2001 Psych Rev)

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How are moral judgements made?

Reason vs intuition

The issue of how automatic judgements are is constantly discussed across psychology, e.g. Bargh & Chartrand (1999 American Psychologist).

The rationalist model

The social intuitionist mode

Haidt (2001) Psychological Review

Infant social evaluation provides a big boost for intuitionist models

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Trends in perspectives

Through most of the 20th Century, the dominant developmental perspective was rationalist

Piaget – Kohlberg

In part motivated by empirical evidence on how adults make decisions, the intuitionist argument is becoming more dominant, also developmentally

Debate continues as to the relative importance of reasoning. Is action motivated by pure ethical reasoning only achieved by monks and philosophers?

Traditional rationalist approaches are exemplified by Kohlberg

Kohlberg is not interested in the yes/no answer, but in the justifications given, i.e. the type of reasoning process.

Kohlberg claimed that development through the stages is invariant and universal, although he conceded that not everyone within a society would reach the later stages.

That individuals are at a particular irreversible stage seems to be wrong: Stage is context dependent Krebs & Denton (2005) Psychological Review

Furthermore, there are cultures where no one ever reaches the later stages, suggesting they are specific to Western cultures

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What is “bad”? •

Initially, what is bad appears undifferentiated across different domains – conventional, moral, and even instrumental (physical flaws).

Not like me = bad (Hamlin et al. 2013 Psych Science).

Infants’ preferences for helpers and hinderers tested when struggling target is similar or dissimilar to the infant in terms of what food they like (crackers or beans) – (Methodological paradigm different to hill climber, with a dropped ball being returned or stolen)

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Developing awareness of standards in four toddlers

4 toddlers and mothers observed in their homes for 2.5 hours every 3-4 weeks

Lamb (1993) Journal of Moral Education

Three- and four-year-olds reactions to flawed and nonflawed objects were compared

– They preferred non-flawed objects

– They were more interested in flawed objects • Situations were contrived in which the children ”damaged” property of an experimenter

– Strength of prosocial reactions (acceptance of responsibility, reparations attempts, etc) was correlated to the strength of their reactions to flawed objects.

This is argued to reflect a basis for early morality which is built on a very general response to ”wrongness”, even wrongness which is not itself a moral problem.

Kochanska et al. (1995) Child Development

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But are moral rules different from other rules like social conventions?

Domain theory says ”yes”

Smetana et al. (1993 Child Dev) interviewed three- and four-year olds about

– Moral transgressions, e.g.

Hitting

Not sharing

– Convention transgressions, e.g.

Eating ice-cream with fingers

Standing up during rest time

The transgressions were either hypothetical or real and just observed (in pre-school)

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Domain theory

From 2 years, morality and convention are beginning to diverge in American children

Even toddlers think violations classed as moral (e.g. hurting) rather than conventional (e.g. eating ice-cream with fingers) are more generalisable and less authority contingent.

The early age at which these differences are appreciated is argued to reflect a fundamental distinction in terms of cognitive representation.

A link between domain theory and the inherited moral core (c.f. Hamlin)?

The claim:

– The feeling of obligation to maintain social convention is maintained by social approval, but moral norms are not maintained by social approval (even neglected children understand them, Smetana et al. 1999 Dev Psy)

– this is core in some experience independent way

At a children’s party, Fred is told off for:

– Hitting Sue – Eating his ice-cream without a spoon

How does he know there is a difference?

Young American children focus on physical harm when generating spontaneous examples of ”bad” actions

Across ages, moral violations were comprised as follows:

Physical Harm 62%

Property Violations 24%

Interpersonal Violations 14%

Tisak & Block (1990) Early Education & Development

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Domain theory: giving way to Moral Foundations theory?

Problems with domain theory – Recent research (e.g. Dahl 2016 Frontiers in Psy) reveals previously unappreciated differences about the way social conventions and moral rules are socialised

– While the moral/conventional distinction replicates in some non-Western cultures, other cultures do not necessarily have the same distinctions

Of a list of 39 wrongful acts, Hindu Brahmin children rated as most serious ”the day after his father’s death, the eldest son had a haircut and ate chicken”

Beating a wife who persistently went alone to the moves ranked 35 – (But this argument does not consider the issue of different informational assumptions

Hindus believe that the chicken-eating imperils the salvation of the father’s soul – in other words, serious harm is being caused

Going alone to the movies, in Brahmin Hindu culture, represents a serious violation of a social contract)

Moral foundations theory (Haidt) is better setup to deal with cross-cultural data

An extension of domain theory, going beyond harm and fairness, posing five intuitive foundational areas based mainly on universal emotional responses

An example pitting harm against purity/respect (Haidt et al. 1993)

A man goes to the supermarket once a week and buys a dead chicken. Before cooking the chicken, he has sexual intercourse with it. Then he cooks it and eats it. So, is this morally wrong?

These domains provide a good explanation of many political differences in Western societies

The great importance of harm and fairness to Western liberals may explain why the other three have been neglected by traditional domain theorists

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General conclusions regarding moral and social domains and development

From the first and second years of life, children are sensitive to things that are “bad” according to a variety of standards, but don’t necessarily differentiate well between different kinds of badness (e.g. responses to broken objects correlate with responses to moral violations).

From the second and third years of life, responses become more differentiated, and children in Western countries begin to distinguish conventional and moral norms.

By adulthood, individuals respond to a very broad range of moral violations

– Most individuals from most cultures attach at least some importance to domains varying from not doing harm, to respecting authority

– However, there are also important individual cultural and individual differences in the relative importance attached

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So exactly how is morality helping the developing child?

We already saw that from an early age, children dislike harmful others

– Not doing harm is obviously helpful then

– (It gets complicated when you need to do harm to get what you want)

– Avoiding harmful people is also obviously useful

Fairness is another crucial part of morality. How is the fair individual helped?

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Fairness

19-month-olds appear sensitive to fairness

Sloane et al. (2012) Psych Science

This isn’t just a looking time thing

Burns & Sommerville (2014) Frontiers Psych

In a study with real actors, 15-month-olds preferred to approach an actor who had distributed fairly

6- to 8-year-olds would actually rather be fair than generous

Shaw (2013) Curr Dir Psych Sci

Participants must decide whether to give or throw away erasers

1. Two other children; you have two erasers

2. Two other children; you only have one eraser 3. Distribute between self and another child.

So even when they could benefit themselves with a small reward, primary school-aged children would rather be fair

Another study (Shaw et al. 2014) showed that this tendency to fairness is reduced, however, when the experimenter is ignorant of the distribution.

In another experiment, children would rather flip a coin than arbitrarily decide who gets a prize (them or another) but if they can cheat, they will.

The cost of partiality is high.

The combined evidence strongly suggests that the function of fairness is self-centred – to appear impartial.

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Morality as a tool

Knowledge of moral rules can be useful even if you don’t feel them as internalised values

Roughly 1% of the population are psychopaths, and many of them are “functioning” in the sense that although they lack empathy, they never commit crime

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What is bullying?

Actions intended to hurt

Many definitions specify acts repeated over time

Usually involves a power imbalance (required by some definitions)

Some definitions specify a role for the peer group in reinforcing the actions

Often aimed at individuals who can be marked out in some way as being different, e.g. appearance or sexual orientation

Bullying has many forms

Physical • Social

– Direct vs. indirect •

Indirect, e.g. rumour spreading. Perpetrator can even remain anonymous.

Direct could be physical or non-physical (e.g. namecalling).

– Online vs. offline

Cyberbullying has increased (obviously) but this may not be only because it is a new possibility, but because the internet lends itself to bullying due to:

– Anonymity

– Ease of reaching an audience (indirect bullying) – Online dis-inhibition

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Bullying is so prevalent that it has even been suggested as a cultural universal

Volk et al. (2012) Aggr Behav

The consequences of bullying to the bully are not severe

– Approaches to bullying which treat it purely as dysfunctional behaviour are starting off on the wrong foot, because bullying is in many cases not a problem for the bully

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Longitudinal patterns in bullying

Especially physical bullying drops off quickly in adolescence in the US context seen here, and in other cultures.

To what extent individuals are chronic bullies throughout childhood is unclear. Around 5% to 10% of individuals in a large international sample show chronic aggression throughout childhood (Broidy et al. 2003 Dev Psychol), but aggression ≠ bullying.

Bullying is known to peak at times of social reorganisation (e.g. school transitions). – Related to bullying’s role in establishing dominance.

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Dramatic variation in bullying prevalence within Europe and North American

A huge survey of 11 to 15 year olds.

Questions were standardised but the huge variation does also call into question the accuracy of the self-report method (see also differences with US data on previous slides).

Nansel et al. (2004) Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med

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We saw last week the many negative consequences of poor peer-relations

Being victimised by bullies can have very great consequences

– 75% of US school shooters have reported being bullied

– Many mental health consequences including anxiety, depression, and suicide

Longitudinal study following 5034 Finns from age 8 (Sourander et al. 2015 JAMA Psychiatry)

By age 29, victims (and actually also bullies) were more likely to have been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder such as depression

However, many (but not all) effects of bullying disappear when controlling for earlier symptoms

– An issue is that bullies often target those with problems, so it’s difficult to determine to what extent bullying causes problems.

Boys who bully or are bullied are more prone to suicide in adulthood, but not when controlling for depression or conduct disorder.

Girls who are bullied are more prone to suicide, even when controlling for these factors.

But is this gender difference real? Look at the overlapping confidence intervals on the Odds Ratio effect size!

Klomek et al. (2009) J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry

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More about gender differences

Gender differences in physical aggression are clear and non-controversial

– demonstrated in many studies across ages and cultures.

A huge meta-analysis of 148 studies (Card et al. 2008 Child Dev) shows that previous conceptions of gender differences in indirect aggression do not hold up to scrutiny.

Boys do show a fair amount more direct aggression.

However, girls show only a trivially larger amount of indirect aggression.

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An international comparison

Nansel et al. (2004) Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med

Despite the high variation between countries in incidence of bullying, the associations between bullying and negative outcomes are strikingly similar.

Across Europe, victims much more than bullies have poor relationships with classmates.

Emotional adjustment: composite measure of different self-reports, e.g. feeling lonely.

Bullies and victims have impaired emotional adjustment, but victims much more so.

Bullies, much more than victims, show other deviant behaviours.

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The idea that bullies usually have cognitive deficits has been common

It is true that aggression is related to a variety of deficits such as lack of empathy. However, aggression ≠ bullying.

A classic and since replicated study of primary school children in south-east London suggests the link between bullying and social cognitive is not as expected (Sutton et al. 1999 Brit J Dev Psy).

– Peer information as to bullying roles.

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Bullies and empathy

Jolliffe & Farrington (2006) Aggr Behav

As a whole, bullies appear not to have deficits in understanding others’ mental states:

Cognitive empathy

They do, however, have a lesser tendency to share others’ mental states:

Affective empathy

Note also: bullies are a heterogonous group with different reasons for bullying. The knuckle-dragger no doubt does exist.

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What’s in it for the bullies?

Juvonen & Graham 2015 Annu Rev Psychol

Bullies have high social status, access to resources, and get to treat their victims as their playthings.

– Worth noting that this all applies well beyond school age.

Because of the mainly positive feedback bullies get, they typically have inflated self-views.

One deficit (apart from empathy) which bullies do tend to suffer from (similarly to their victims) is hostile attribution bias.

– They can maintain their positive self-view by blaming others.

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Characteristics of victims of bullying

Juvonen & Graham 2015 Annu Rev Psychol

Two subtypes identified:

1. Highly submissive victims who are easy targets

Sadly these individuals can have a tendency to self-blame (e.g., “I would not be picked on if I were a cooler kid”)

2. Those with high but ineffective reactive aggression

These individuals are apparently rewarding to bully

Often bullies themselves • Often “misfit” in some way.

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How to prevent bullying?

Two main approaches:

– School-wide interventions

Creating an anti-bullying culture in the whole school with activities involving all children

– Targeted interventions

Focussed on encouraging behaviour change in particular individuals

Almost always bullies. I didn’t find any useful studies of interventions targeting victims, although improving their social skills might help.

– Within these two types, many different approaches, with success of an approach often context dependent

For example, Olweus method (whole school approach focussing on heightened awareness in teachers and students and consistent responses from teachers) known for being very successful in Norway.

Now exported abroad, but recent meta-analysis of 16 studies show positive effects in only about a third of cases (Merrell et al. 2008 School Psych Quart).

Teachers actually reported more bullying (probably awareness effect)

Another meta-analysis which is broader

Vreeman & Carroll (2007 Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med): “Only 4 of the 10 curriculum studies showed decreased bullying, but 3 of those 4 also showed no improvement in some populations. Of the 10 studies evaluating the whole-school approach, 7 revealed decreased bullying, with younger children having fewer positive effects. Three of the [four] social skills training studies showed no clear bullying reduction.”

These kind of patchy results are typical and probably represent the fact that many interventions just don’t work, and many only work in certain types of school.

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Challenges for anti-bullying programs

Bystander reinforcement is a strong effect which motivates bullies, meaning that whole school programs may be the most effective

– Not only active bullies need behaviour change, but also those who passively condone it

– Another way to deal with this issue is to find other ways to allow bullies to achieve their goals of social success without needing to bully

– This view has not motivated many interventions because of the common perspective that bullying is dysfunctional • Whole school approaches may be the most effective but they are not always popular for a variety of reasons, e.g.

– More demanding to implement and maintain consistently

– Less popular with parents, who want bullies to be “dealt with”

Targeted approaches to conduct disorder involving grouping problem children are in fact frequently iatrogenic! – Individuals can reinforce each others’ negative behaviour.

Many programs are designed in such a way that rigorous evaluation is not possible.