This article was written by Susan M. Swearer from the University of Nebraska and Shelley Hymel from the University of British Columbia
Bullying is a quit complexe phenomenon that is influenced by mutliple factors. To expose this complexity Swearer uses two models. On the one hand, a social ecological framework, that exposes 5 factors asscociated with bullying/victimization. On the other hand, a diathesis stress model that explain how involvment in bullying/victimization can lead to diverse outcomes such as depression or anxiety.
A social ecological framework
According to the social ecological framework, bullying and victimization do not occur in isolation. It indeed stems from complex interactions between individuals and the context in which they function. To support this idea, the model porposes five mains factors of influence on once connexion to bullying.
The first factor concerns the individual influences. Callous-unemotional traits, psychopathic tendencies, antisocial personality traits, suscpetibility to peer pressur, anxiety and depression are personnal traits that might conduct to the appearance of bullying perpetration. Similarly, poor physical health, poor school adjustment, including being unhappy, feeling unsafe, loneliness and withdrawal, anxiety, suicidal ideation social avoidance, represent risk factors for being bullied by peers.
Family influences consitute a second type of factor that can interfer in bullying phenomenon. On the one hand, poor parental supervision, family members’s involvement in gangs, parental conflict, domestic violence, low parental communication, lack of parent emotional support, authoritarian parents, in other words agressive modeling and poor parental supervision contribute to bullying perpetration. On the other hand, abuse, neglect overprotective parenting might conduct to victimization.
Peer influences can also contribute to the occurrence of bullying phenomenon. Bullying as well as victimization can indeed be influenced by classrooms characterized by peer norms that support bullying, by high peer conflict. Affiliation with aggressive peers is also associated with greater bullying perpetration. These association may simply reflect homophily which is the tendency to affiliate with similar peers.
An other type of factors of influence is repreasented by school influences. Positive or negative climate of the school impacts such as inappropriate teacher responses, poor teacher-student relationships lack of teacher support and lack of engagement in school activitie may interfer in bullying phenomenon.
Finally, community as well as cultural influences Negative or unsafe neighborhoods, gang affiliation, poverty, exposure to violent TV and video games, communities in which violence is modeled or condoned represente a risk for bullying phenomenon.
Furthermore, bullying and victimization can lead to a wide range of outcomes such as depression ,anxiety, social withdrawal, deliquent behavior, diagnosis of antisocial personnality disorder, etc. The model below provides an explanation about how victimization and bullying can lead to those outcomes.
A diathesis stress models :
This model establish an association between stress, bullying and psychopathology.
So psychopathology would occur as the result of the combination of individual cognitive or biological vulnerabilities (diathesis) and certain environmental stressors.
For exemple individual cognitive vulnerabilities to victimization could refer to the way some people naturally interpret events through a lens of worry and fear. And cognitive vulnerabilities to bullying perpetration could refers to the capacity of natural disengagment.
As for biological vulnerabilities to victimization, it refers to the foundings of Karg, Shedden et Sen in 2011. According to them the gene 5HTTLPR plays a role in the relationship between maltreated children and drepression but also between victimized children and depression.
Biological vulnerabilities to bullying perpetration concern the heritable tendency for psychopathy.
Finally, involvment in bullying, as either a victim or a perpetrator , is considered as a negative life event or environnemental stressors.
So, to be more concrete, if you take a person with the 5HTTLPR gene and put her, in the position of a victim of bullying, then this personne would be more inclined to suffer of depression. The same goes for the capacity of natural disengagement or the tendency of psychopathy.
To conclude, these modeles suggest that effective bullying prevention and intervention efforts must take into account the complexities of the human experience. But it primarily concerns cases in which bullying and victimization contribute to sigificant psychological and mental health difficulties.
Words we have learnt: Bullying, Social ecological framework, A diathesis stress model, Bullying perpetration
Lucie Prunes – Amandine Redureau