A Student in Distress: Moral Frames and Bystander Behavior in School

Thornberg, Robert

doi:10.1086/651197

Cited by 37 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…As found in previous studies (Thornberg, 2010;Thornberg et al, 2012), the degree to which students define harm in the situation influences their motivation to intervene or not intervene. Not all situations are defined as serious or as bullying.…”

Section: Defining the Seriousnessmentioning

confidence: 54%

“…Different methods have been used, such as open questions in questionnaires (Bellmore, Ma, You, & Hughes, 2012;Rigby & Johnson, 2005), field observations and follow-up interviews (Thornberg 2007(Thornberg , 2010, and qualitative interviews .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These studies, when taken together, revealed that among students, the reasons associated with helping have been (a) interpretation of severe harm in the situation (Thornberg, 2010;Thornberg et al, 2012), (b) feelings of empathy with or concern for the victim (Bellmore et al, 2012;Rigby & Johnson, 2005;Thornberg, 2010;Thornberg et al, 2012), (c) emphasis on the wrongness or unfairness of the event (Bellmore et al, 2012;Rigby & Johnson, 2005;Thornberg et al, 2012), (d) anger towards the transgressor (Thornberg, 2010), (e) friendship with the victim (Bellmore et al, 2012;Rigby & Johnson, 2005;Thornberg, 2010;Thornberg et al, 2012), (f) a high social status among peers (Thornberg, 2010;Thornberg et al, 2012), (g) a desire to demonstrate caring (Bellmore et al, 2012), (h) feeling a confident in helping (Bellmore et al, 2012;Thornberg, 2010;Thornberg et al, 2012), (i) a perception that adults want them to intervene , and (j) stating that helping is simply consistent with the sort of person they are (Rigby & Johnson, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast, reasons associated with non-helping behaviour among the students have been (a) interpretation of low or no harm in the situation , including trivialization of the event (Bellmore et al, 2012;Thornberg, 2007Thornberg, , 2010) and habituation to bullying (i.e., bullying takes place often and students view it as a routine phenomenon; Thornberg et al, 2012), (b) dissociation from the event (Bellmore et al, 2012;Thornberg, 2007), including thinking it is none of their business (Rigby & Johnson, 2005) and viewing the victim as a non-friend (Thornberg, 2007(Thornberg, , 2010; Thornberg et al, 2012), (c) self-protection (Bellmore et al, 2012), including fear of consequences (Rigby & Johnson, 2005;Thornberg, 2007Thornberg, , 2010; Thornberg et al, 2012), (d) friendship with the bully , (e) a dislike of the victim , (f) a lack of personal responsibility and a responsibility transfer to teachers, other peersparticularly the victim's friends -or the transgressor (Bellmore et al, 2012;Thornberg, 2007Thornberg, , 2010; Thornberg et al, 2012), (g) blaming the victim , (h) enjoyment of the event (Rigby & Johnson, 2005;Thornberg et al, 2012), (i) admiration for aggressors (Rigby & Johnson, 2005), (j) believing the bully , (k) low social status among peers (Thornberg, 2010;Thornberg et al, 2012), and (l) uncertainty about one's ability to help (Rigby & Johnson, 2005;Thornberg et al, 2012) or about what to do (Bellmore et al, 2012). In their study, Rigby and Johnson (2005) made a distinction between ignoring and assisting the bully as two different types of nonhelp behaviour.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bystanders to bullying: fourth- to seventh-grade students’ perspectives on their reactions

Forsberg¹,

Thornberg²,

Samuelsson³

2014

Research Papers in Education

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113

130

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The aim with the present study was to investigate bystander actions in bullying situations as well as reasons behind these actions as they are articulated by Swedish students from fourth to seventh grade. Forty-three semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with students. Qualitative analysis of data was performed by methods from grounded theory. The analysis of the student voices of being a bystander in bullying reveals a complexity in which different definition-of-situation processes are evoked (a) relations (friends and social hierarchy), (b) defining seriousness, (c) victim's contribution to the situation, (d) social roles and intervention responsibilities, and (e) distressing emotions. There are often conflicted motives in how to act as a bystander, which could evoke moral distress among the students.Our analysis is unique in that it introduces the concept of moral distress as a process that has to be considered in order to better understand bystander actions among children The findings also indicate bystander reactions that could be associated with moral disengagement, such as not perceiving a moral obligation to intervene if the victim is defined as a non-friend ('none of my business'), protecting the friendship with the bully, and blaming the victim.

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Section: Defining the Seriousnessmentioning

confidence: 54%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Bystanders to bullying: fourth- to seventh-grade students’ perspectives on their reactions

Forsberg¹,

Thornberg²,

Samuelsson³

2014

Research Papers in Education

Self Cite

113

130

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Whereas boys play and interact in larger groups and establish and maintain friendships based on mutual interests and activities, girls form close, intimate friendship relationships in which they more typically share confidences (Golombok and Fivush 1994). Being sensitive, empathic, affectionate, intimate, and interested in emotional issues is more in line with traditional female identity and norms and less with male identity and norms (e.g., Maccoby and Jacklin 1987;Thornberg 2010a;Thorne 1993). For example, Tracey et al (2005) found that female adolescents were more interested in social issues than male adolescents.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Older Teenagers’ Explanations of Bullying

Thornberg

Rosenqvist

Johansson

2012

Child Youth Care Forum

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Background In accordance with the social information processing model, how adolescents attribute cause to a particular social situation (e.g., bullying) they witness or participate in, influences their online social information processing, and hence, how they will act in the situation. Objective The aim of the present study was to explore how older teenagers explain why bullying takes place at school, and whether there were any differences in explaining bullying due to gender. Methods Two hundred and fifteen Swedish students in upper secondary school responded to a questionnaire. Mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative methods) were used to analyze data. Results The qualitative analysis resulted in three main categories and nine subcategories regarding accounts of bullying causes. According to the findings, the youth explained bullying much more often with individualistic explanations (bully attributing and victim attributing) than nonindividualistic explanations (social context attributing). Furthermore, girls tended to provide a greater number of bullying explanations and were more likely to attribute bullying causes to the bully and the victim, as compared to boys. Conclusions The findings provide insights into older teenagers' understanding of why bullying occurs in school. The study also identified some gender differences but also some mixed findings regarding gender differences in comparison with previous research with younger participants. The authors concluded that more research has to be done to investigate age and gender differences.Keywords: Bullying; Peer victimization; Teenagers' perspectives; Attribution; Gender Introduction Bullying, commonly defined as repeated aggression or harassments directed at targets who are disadvantaged or less powerful in their interactions with the bully or bullies (Jimerson et al. 2010;Olweus 1993;Terranova 2009), is a widespread problem in schools that students across the world report seeing or experiencing (e.g., Borntrager et al. 2009;Eslea et al. 2003). One way of enhancing our understanding of school bullying and hence generating more effective bullying prevention and intervention programs is to investigate students' perspectives and how they explain bullying because how they understand, interpret and attribute bullying has an impact on their reactions and behaviors if they see or become involved in bullying situations.In Crick and Dodge's (1994) social information processing (SIP) model, children and adolescents' assumptions and conceptions of social situations and people involved in these situations influence how they process social information and thus how they respond and act in these social situations (also see Dodge et al. 2006;Gifford-Smith and Rabiner 2004). Attribution is a cognitive process in which people infer causes of events. Causal reasoning involves assumptions of other people's qualities or characteristics and assumptions of situational dynamics (Fiske and Taylor 2008). How children and adolescents attribute cause to a particular socia...

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How & Why Does Bystanding Have Such a Startling Impact on the Architecture of School Bullying and Violence?

Twemlow

Sacco

2013

Int. J. Appl. Psychoanal. Studies

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The paper summarises the literature and our clinical experience with the bystander role in school bullying and other violence. The shift from bully focus to school climate focus is central, as well as seeing the plight of the bully and victim as not signs of individual psychopathology, but signs of markedly dysfunctional school leadership systems and very dysfunctional dynamics within a school with serious bullying. We suggest based on 20 years of research, that the focus should be on an integrated bottom up approach that allows each school to find its own path.Power is not an institution, and not a structure, neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with, it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategic situation in a particular society.

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A Student in Distress: Moral Frames and Bystander Behavior in School

Cited by 37 publications

References 42 publications

Bystanders to bullying: fourth- to seventh-grade students’ perspectives on their reactions

Bystanders to bullying: fourth- to seventh-grade students’ perspectives on their reactions

Older Teenagers’ Explanations of Bullying

How & Why Does Bystanding Have Such a Startling Impact on the Architecture of School Bullying and Violence?

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