Bullying Perpetration, Moral Disengagement and Need for Popularity: Examining Reciprocal Associations in Adolescence

Abstract

Precursors and consequences of bullying have been widely explored, but much remains unclear about the association of moral and motivational factors. This study examined longitudinal associations between need for popularity, moral disengagement, and bullying perpetration. A total of 3017 participants, aged 11 to 16 years in wave 1 (49% girls; Mage = 13.15, SD = 1.09), were surveyed across four waves with six-month intervals. At the between-person level, cross-lagged modeling revealed a positive bidirectional association between moral disengagement and need for popularity; bullying perpetration was predicted by both need for popularity and moral disengagement. From the within-person level, random intercept cross-lagged analyses revealed that need for popularity predicted both moral disengagement and bullying perpetration. The results highlight the interplay between motivational and moral mechanisms that underlies bullying behavior.

A Meta-Analytic Review of Moral Disengagement and Cyberbullying

“…The effect of moral disengagement on traditional bullying is clear ( Paciello et al, 2020 ; Romera et al, 2021a ; Travlos et al, 2021 ), while the relationship between moral disengagement and cyberbullying remains controversial ( Lo Cricchio et al, 2021 ). Firstly, the characteristics of offline and online moral disengagement and cyberbullying are different.…”

“…Nevertheless, some researchers consider that there are gender differences in a specific form of cyberbullying. For example, girls usually use emails or chat rooms for cyberbullying ( Zych et al, 2019a ), while boys often employ text messages or online games for cyberbullying ( Wang et al, 2016 ; Romera et al, 2021a ). They thought that individuals of different genders have different preferences for bullying behavior ( Kowalski et al, 2018 ).…”

Bullying and social goal‐setting in youth: A meta‐analysis

“…Originating in the 1970s and exponentially increasing since the 1990s worldwide, research on bullying remains voluminous (Smith et al., 2021). Alongside numerous family, peer, school, and community/cultural influences (see Swearer & Hymel, 2015), individual‐level factors like low empathy, callous‐unemotionality (Zych & Llorent, 2019), and need for popularity among peers (Romera et al., 2021) are linked to higher risk of bullying perpetration.…”

“…Beyond examining goals as merely “antisocial” and “prosocial,” we sought to compare the relative strength of specific goals associated positively with bullying (status/power vs. antisocial goals). This nuanced analysis was expected to contribute to an increasingly detailed understanding of motivations for bullying, for which further research is needed (e.g., Romera et al., 2021; Sanders et al., 2021; Volk et al., 2017). To explain, bullying behavior is associated positively with two clusters of social goals: goals for social status or power among peers (e.g., Lenzi et al., 2014; Sijtsema et al., 2009) and goals that can be characterized as antisocial in nature (e.g., revenge/retaliation goals, aggressive goals; Andreou & Metallidou, 2004; Ziv et al., 2013).…”

Relationship between Emotional Intelligence, Victimization, and Academic Achievement in High School Students

“…In recent decades, social concern about violent behavior in the educational field has been increasing (Espelage and Hong 2019;Larrain and Garaigordobil 2020). Bullying produces poor interpersonal relationships, moral transgressions, unjustified aggressiveness, abuse, and mistreatment of one another (Romera et al 2021) with negative consequences due to the emotional mismatch they experience (Nocentini et al 2019;Reyzabal and Sanz 2014;Martínez-Martínez et al 2020). The actions of intimidation and victimization affect physical, psychological, and relational well-being (Menesini and Salmivalli 2017).…”