Bullying and Healthy Friendships: A Science-Based Research Perspective

Bullying and Healthy Friendships: A Science-Based Research Perspective
By Mary Jane Rotheram, Ph.D.
January 17, 2011

Bullying touches all children. Each year, one in three children in the U.S. will be bullied by their peers. Almost all children are victims of bullying at some point in their childhood, and none will get through school without seeing others be bullied. Most children who bully also get bullied by others, and even the most compassionate children engage in bullying at one time or another.

Family coaches at The UCLA Family Commons offer tools and information to help parents and children address a wide range of bullying situations. Parents can learn how to tell if a child is bullying or being bullied, when and how to notify others in the school community, and how to create a “bully-free” home environment. Children can learn how to tell when someone is a good friend, how to be a good friend to others, and what to do when someone makes a mistake in friendship.

Our family coaching and workshops are based on the latest scientific research about bullying – how it arises in our culture today, what its causes and effects are, and what can be done to prevent it. Some of the best research to date on the topic of bullying is summarized below.

What is Bullying?

Bullying is every parent’s nightmare. Large numbers of children find themselves in the social role of bully, victim, bully-victim, or bystander. Left unchallenged, bullying behaviors are likely to increase and contribute to negative school environments and experiences. Bullying is a strategy used to achieve one’s goals.

Bullying is characterized by an imbalance of power and repetitive behaviors that result in intentional aggressive or relational harm. Physical aggression is more typical of boys than girls. It involves an imbalance of power and includes physical harm or the threat of harm. Relational aggression (e.g., using social exclusion, spreading rumors) causes harm by damaging relationships.

Boys or girls both use bullying in an attempt to challenge their target’s social goals. The social goal of many boys is dominance. Boys use bullying and “punking” – a related practice characterized by verbal and physical violence, humiliation, and shaming, usually done in public to other males – to affirm masculinity norms of toughness, strength, dominance, and control. Girls have social goals associated with affiliation and intimacy. Relational aggression by girls often takes the form of damaging peer relationships and includes verbal assaults such as teasing or name calling, as well as psychological attacks such as gossip, social exclusion, and strategic friendship manipulation. A girl’s ability to identify these indirect attacks may be imperative for being able to enact an effective defense. Given that many students do not recognize relational aggression as a form of bullying, their experiences go unreported to parent or teachers.

Physical victimization is more strongly related to alcohol use, aggression, and delinquent behavior among boys than girls. Relational victimization is more strongly related to physical aggression and marijuana use among girls than boys, but more strongly related to relational aggression among boys than girls.

Why Has Bullying Become So Prevalent in American Society?

There are at least two major factors that contribute to bullying behavior – a shift in American cultural norms and parental influence.

Factor Number One:            The Cultural Context of Bullying and Meanness

Over the last 30 years, there have been two major shifts in American cultural norms that affect bullying. The first is an increase in competitiveness, especially among children. The second is an increase towards androgynous gender roles. 

The first norm – increasing competitiveness – has resulted, in large part, from certain values in American culture that have become progressively more important over the last 40 years, such as:

• Individual achievement, in contrast to group achievement;
• Instrumental success, in contrast to emotional expressiveness;
• Hierarchical relationship structures, in contrast to egalitarian structures; and
• A rigid sense of time and the use of time, in contrast to a more fluid sense.

These values are reflected in the cultural discourse about the difficulty in children gaining entrance to first-rate schools, key childhood friendships that can facilitate later business relationships, and the importance of providing children with “concerted cultivation.” The pressure to achieve, succeed, and acquire competencies and skills that will later provide a competitive edge and lead to powerful positions in later life are much greater on children today, compared to 40 years ago. These values become reflected in daily interactions and routines in American institutions that are most likely to shape children: families, schools, sports teams, and religious institutions (e.g. churches, synagogues).

Simultaneously, and with respect to the second norm, there are multiple social markers demonstrating realignment of gender roles in America. Consider the following statistics:

• While post-World War II, over 90% of adults married at some point in their lives, an estimated 30% of today’s young adults who will never marry.
• While two-parent households were the norm following World War II, today only 63% of families have two parents living at home.
• In 1960, only 20% of mothers worked outside the home; today more than 70% of mothers work.
• Similarly, while few men in the 1960s were actively involved in daily parenting, today millions of men play a primary parenting role.

These are dramatic role shifts within a relatively short period of a few decades. These shifts reverberate into the daily expectations of achievement and competitiveness for young girls and for a greater family and emotional orientation among young boys. Redefinitions of gender roles are critical influences on the perceptions of the appropriateness of bullying and meanness in daily life. Increased aggression, reflected in bullying or being mean, is a reflection of a set of broader cultural trends, not individual deviance or dysfunction.

Factor Number Two: Bullying is a Parenting Issue

There is also a significant association between a child’s physical and relational aggression and the parents’ own parenting style, psychological control behaviors, and attachment indicators.

Several studies have shown that authoritarian and permissive parenting styles are associated with higher rates of physical aggression in children. Corporal punishment may teach children that physically aggressive behavior is acceptable when interacting with others. Permissive parents may communicate that physically aggressive behavior is acceptable when a child is not punished after physically aggressing another child. An authoritarian parent’s use of power assertive techniques (e.g., physical punishments, threats, belittling statements) may be interpreted as signs of parental rejection by children and model aversive behavior as effective conflict resolution. This parenting style is associated with physically aggressive behaviors by children towards their peers. Some punitive parenting behaviors may be relationally aggressive in nature (e.g., love withdrawal) and cause the child to use these behaviors in their interactions with peers. Mother-child hostility and lack of parental monitoring are associated with adolescents’ use of relational aggression with peers.

Children whose relationship with their parent(s) is characterized by high levels of psychological control are more likely to engage in relational aggressive behaviors with their peers. Psychological control, which includes love withdrawal, guilt induction, negative affect-laden expressions such as disappointment and shame, and excessive possessiveness or protectiveness, is associated with childhood aggression. These control behaviors encroach upon the psychological and emotional development of a child via the manipulation and exploitation of the parent-child bond.

According to attachment theory, when children’s attachment behavior is not met with comfort or reliable support on the part of the parents, this will often arouse feelings of anger and anxiety on the part of the child. Children who experienced anxious-avoidant attachments as infants are expected to exhibit physical aggression because of expectations that others will not be available or caring and because their experience has shown them that social encounters are quite often not pleasant experiences. Indeed, attachment theory studies have found the following correlations:

• Parents’ authoritarian and permissive parenting were positively related to children’s relational aggression. The sex composition of the parent-child pair appears to be important in understanding the pattern of relationship between parenting styles and aggression, at least in young children aged about 2½ to 6 years. For boys, mother’s permissive parenting and father’s authoritarian parenting were associated with relational aggression. For girl’s, authoritarian styles of both parents and permission parenting by mothers were associated with relational aggression.

• Children whose parents report having used psychological control frequently were more likely to behave in relationally and physically aggressive ways.

• Relationally aggressive girls, but not boys, were more likely to have an insecure attachment relationship with their mother. Children’s relational aggression was significantly associated with having an insecure attachment relationship with their father for boys but not for girls.

• Boy’s physical aggression was not significantly correlated with having an insecure attachment relationship with either their mother or father. For girls, however, having an insecure attachment relationship with their mother, but not their father, was associated with not being physically aggressive.

Mothers’ responses are sensitive to the form of aggression used by their children. Studies show that mothers reported lower levels of negative affect and smaller likelihood of intervening when asked to imagine their child engaged in relational aggression as compared to physical aggression. These different beliefs about relational and physical aggression may lead to distinct social, cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses. Young children are being given different messages about relational aggression than about physical aggression. These messages may promote the use of the former and inhibit the use of the later.

Bullying Starts in Early Childhood

Several studies have shown that bullying behaviors are already quite common in preschooler peer interactions and engagement in relational aggression is associated with social-psychological adjustment problems. Research has shown that both physical and relational aggression can lead to future social maladjustment. Yet, knowledge about relational aggression is in its infancy when compared to knowledge about physical aggression. The best evaluation tool to assess preschoolers’ types of aggression, however, is not yet clear. The development of accurate, practical measures will provide educators with better identification, prevention, and intervention strategies for boys and girls.

Studies have shown that relational aggression may be associated with social prominence as early as 5 and 6 years of age. These preschool “Queen Bees” are children with strong social impact who are perceived by their peers as more sociable and more aggressive than the average child; they demonstrate an active mix of positive and negative behavior. Relational aggressive strategies can be rewarded with social status.

How Prevalent is Bullying?

Bullying is a significant and growing problem. Bullying is an international phenomenon that has been widely reported and studied in countries as diverse as Norway, Japan, Australia, Spain, and the United States. Thirty percent of middle school students in the Unites States report physical or relational bullying. An international cross-sectional survey of preadolescents and adolescents in 28 European and North American countries found an incident rate from 6.3 percent among Swedish girls to 41.2 percent among Lithuanian boys. In Japan, “ijime” is the term most similar to bullying. It describes aggressive behavior that causes a victim more psychological than physical suffering; it is characterized by verbal, indirect aggression.

Detecting Bullying and Victimization Behavior

Investigators typically differentiate between (a) children who bully others and who are not themselves victimized (bullies or aggressive non-victims), (b) children who are victimized and who bully others (bully-victims, provocative victims, or aggressive victims), and (c) children who are victimized without being aggressive (victims, passive victims, or non-aggressive victims). There are distinct behavior patterns for each of these three types:

Bullies: Bully children are less pro-social. They also have more leadership skills than non-involved children. Bullies typically belong to larger social clusters and are frequently affiliated with other bullies or bully-victims. Bullies seem to be preferred playmates, particularly by other aggressive boys. This affiliation with aggressive children may lead to an increase in bullying behavior. Bullying and victimization have a social and interactional nature; this has practical implications for prevention and interventions against bully/victim behaviors.

Bully-Victims: These children are generally more aggressive than their peers. Bully-victims are less cooperative, less sociable, and more frequently have no playmates than non-involved children. Bully-victims are the most at-risk subgroup, reporting increased problem behaviors, the poorest psychological health, the most physical injury, and the poorest school attitudes in comparisons to non-involved children, bullies, or victims. They reported the most injury as well as weapon carrying. Because of their prior injuries, they feel particularly vulnerable and believe they need to carry weapons for self-protection as well as for intimidation of others.

Victims: Compared to non-involved children, victims are more submissive, have fewer leadership skills, are more withdrawn, more isolated, less cooperative, less sociable, and frequently have no playmates. Victimized children’s lack of friends might render them psychologically and socially vulnerable, and thus more prone to becoming easy targets.

Self-efficacy measures, peer interactions, and attitudes are associated with both bullying and victimization. In particular: (a) high self-efficacy for aggression is associated with both bullying and victimizations, whereas high self-efficacy for assertion and for intervening in bully/victim situations is associated with lower scores on physical victimization for boys and girls respectfully; (b) higher scores on positive interactions with peers are associated with lower scores in victimization and (c) higher scores on pro-bully attitudes are associated with higher scores on both bullying and victimization.

Bullying and victimization are characterized by three distinct systemic patterns: (a) serial bullying; (b) multiple victimization; and (c) sibling bullying.

Serial bullying is the phenomenon of a perpetrator preying on two or more victims targeted from across a broad range of classes. Serial bullies, although small in number, are responsible for a sizeable proportion of the bullying that occurs in any school environment, and targeting interventions at them can eliminate a significant proportion of violence. The incidence of serial bullying is higher in boys than in girls (3.5 victims vs. 2.57 victims, respectively). Because serial bullies tend to engage in more physical aggression, its consequences are greater, too. By spotting the serial bullies, most victimization and related physical violence in a school can be identified. Serial bullies can be identified at every grade level. The history and developmental pathways to bullying can be traced back to a very young age, in some instances to preschool/kindergarten years.

Multiple victimization is the pattern of multiple perpetrators converging on a single victim.

Sibling bullying is related to coercive parental exchanges, lack of parental monitoring, and tolerance by parents for sibling conflict. It is not clear if the phenomenon is best discussed within the framework of bullying, intra-family dynamics, or family dysfunction.

Three factors impact the likelihood of chronic victimization: 

• Personal factors: physical attributes (e.g. deviant external factors), behavioral attributes (e.g., attention-seeking, disruptiveness, and restlessness), social-cognitive factors (e.g., deficiencies in social information processing), personality dispositions;
• Peer-relational factors; and
• Family-relational factors. 

Victimization may be overt or relational. It may be related to factors like obesity, which causes peers to view overweight children as different and undesirable.

What Are the Consequences of Bullying?

Relationally aggressive children are significantly more socially and emotionally maladjusted than their non-relationally aggressive peers. Relational aggression during middle childhood is associated with both concurrent and future rejection and internalizing and externalizing problems for both girls and boys. Perpetrators of bullying experience significant negative consequences, such as increased risk for mental health disorders, (e.g., attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder, depression, oppositional defiant disorder, and conduct disorder). As bullies mature from middle to high school, they experience a decline in popularity because they seem to rely upon dominance-oriented strategies as they age.

The negative impact of bullying may persist into adulthood, where it manifests as negative mental health and social outcomes. As adults, bullies face a greater likelihood of engaging in criminal behavior, domestic violence, and substance abuse. Bullies are also more likely than non-bullies to have poor academic achievement and struggle with career performance in adulthood. Bullying is an intergenerational phenomenon. Childhood bullies are often severely punitive with their own children, who are subsequently more likely to be aggressive with peers.

Victims of bullying experience significant potential consequences: anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, physical and psychosomatic complaints, posttraumatic stress disorder, and suicidal ideation.

What Interventions Can Assist With Bullying Behaviors?

Different jurisdictions have implemented interventions to address the impact of bullying. Norway, for example, has implemented a national curriculum (Olweus Bullying Prevention Program) in primary school to promote a positive school environment by promoting school-wide awareness of bullying. Positive, evidence-based models about what to do about bullying exist. Many of them have been modeled after the pioneering work of Olweus in Bergen, Norway. They derive from a systemic perspective and are based on ‘whole school’ interventions, and, in some cases, community involvement. These interventions share one common recommendation: that a widespread change in the culture and expectations of schools is needed. They have been slow to reach parents and families.

For example, secondary school pupils in both England and Japan have definitive ideas about what should be done when they are victimized in certain ways (e.g., seek help, challenge the bullying children), and when they see someone else being victimized (e.g., taking direct action against the bully). Yet this conviction does not always translate into action. An important step to prevent bullying is to change the climate of the school so that victims can tell others about being bullied with trust and confidence.

There is a link between perceived popularity and aggression. A sizable number of perpetrators of physical and relational aggression are likely to be perceived as popular. Perceived popular aggressive youths may be unlikely to be targeted for interventions, which tend to focus on youths with both social and behavioral problems. However, because of the negative impact of aggression on victims, excluding perceived popular youth from intervention efforts would likely be a mistake. Perceived popular aggressors may have little motivation to change if they are not suffering personally. Intervening only with the individual aggressors and not the larger peer group would likely not be sufficient. Altering the behavior of individual perceived popular youth might require altering what behaviors are rewarded with high status within the peer culture. Whether it is possible to elicit such a major change in the dynamics of a peer system is unknown.

Relational aggression displayed by perceived popular children is embedded in the larger peer context, in that peers likely sanction and perhaps assist with aggression displayed by high-status peers. Children socially construct who among them are perceived as popular and what behaviors will be tolerated by peers with that status. Consequently, altering the behavior of perceived popular children may require altering what behaviors are rewarded with high status within the peer culture.

There are more interventions to address physical aggression than relational aggression, so the physical aggression literature can be applied to relationally aggressive children and their targets, and interventions can be extrapolated from it. Relational aggression is not a phase that will go away; it may increase with time, especially with girls. Because relational aggression is important in maintaining social hierarchies, interventions that focus exclusively on individuals may not work. Effective interventions need to address both personal behaviors and peer-group dynamics. Seeking to change which behaviors are rewarded with high social status may be one approach to dealing with group dynamics. Implementing positive behavioral-support strategies and focusing on creating and maintaining a positive climate or culture can result in less physical bullying. Creating a school climate that fosters inclusion, tolerance, respect, and other positive values may impact relationally aggressive behaviors. A less threatening climate decreases aggressive behavior. It appears that attending to the school climate and behaviorally teaching pro-social skills probably decreases the likelihood of children interacting in threatening ways. Focusing on skills that help children develop and maintain social support, may minimize the impact of victimization from relational aggression.

A specific focus on the behavior of children who bully and those who are victimized may be justified in certain cases. But a more positive constructive approach may be to include more work on reducing the possibility of peer rejection and marginalization, a social phenomenon that reinforces the creation of both bullies and victims.

At least one intervention that appears to have the capacity to address relational aggression is tootling – catching students “doing good.”

Researchers have conducted meta-analytic research on bullying prevention and anger management groups. These cognitive-behavioral psycho-educational groups focus on communication, anger management, aggression control, empathy development, and problem-solving skills. A review of 30 studies of cognitive therapy for antisocial behavior from 1974 to 1998 reported that approximately 60% of the interventions were in school settings and the average child in treatment improved 69% more than the control group members. The few studies that included follow-up data indicated that effects were maintained or increased over time. Those interventions that were focused on the child (ages 10 and older) were less efficacious than those that included parent training (usually for pre-school children); there was also a small effect for age, with younger children improving more than older children.

If Evidenced-Based Interventions for Bullying Exist, Why is a Coaching Approach Needed?

There has been strong advocacy for the implementation of efficacious, structured interventions, in community settings. However, these recommendations have led to only limited adoption of these programs for use in community settings. Community providers have encountered notable difficulties in implementing these types of programs with fidelity. For example, in phone surveys of 104 school districts in 12 states, 59% of school districts reported implementing research-based substance abuse prevention programs; however, only 19% of those districts reported that they implemented the programs with fidelity. Future interventions need to have demonstrated efficacy at preventing risk behaviors and should be applicable, feasible, and useful in the settings where these programs are offered. Incorporating both the best in behavioral science while also meeting the needs of the setting in which interventions are to be implemented will lead to broader adoption and greater intervention effectiveness.

Providers report that research-based intervention protocols often do not fit the settings and consumer groups for which they are intended. There are numerous challenges in implementing many research based interventions. For example, the interventions: 1) require agencies to provide an entirely new service, which necessitates shifting staff time from existing work to which the agency is already committed; 2) are of a duration and intensity greater than many agencies have the capacity to implement; 3) have delivery formats (e.g., structured groups) that are not otherwise used in these agencies and which youth providers may not have the skills to implement (e.g., no training in group behavior management); and 4) can face problems with youth participation when implemented in community settings that youth attend voluntarily.

Furthermore, while efficacious interventions have reached some schools, they have been cut short by emphasis on the No Child Left behind Act. The long term goal is to make these intervention programs more available and effective.

In the interim, coaching provides families with immediate and intensive techniques and information to address bullying and victimization. If bullying is affecting your child, family life, or school, please contact The UCLA Family Commons to discuss whether family coaching might be right for you. We can also bring bullying workshops or seminars on-site to your school. Our coaches and instructors bring a diversity of backgrounds and wide range of life experiences to bear on the complex issue of bullying in the United States in the 21^st century.

Contact Information:
Telephone – 310.395.5650
Email: info@uclacommons.com