Speakers
Description
Peer defending, or actions taken to help victimized youth, continues to be an active field of research and a core component of many antibullying interventions. This symposium presents a collection of novel studies on peer defending, focused on the antecedents of defending, the strategies students use to intervene in bullying, and the consequences of being defended for victims. Together, our studies examine peer defending at multiple levels. Three of our studies discuss the antecedents of peer defending. One study investigates whether moral disengagement and defender self-efficacy (individual), and collective efficacy (classroom) were related to peer defending, unconcerned passive bystanding, and guilty passive bystanding. Another investigates whether the relationship between popularity and peer defending is influenced by social norms about dominance acquisition and gender. The third uses virtual-reality to investigate whether person-in-context factors influence if and how students defend. Two of our studies are focused on the outcomes of defending. One evaluates the efficacy of peer defending by comparing the strategies typically used by defenders (direct, indirect, both), their social dominance, social preference, and prosocial orientations. The other examines whether victims of bullying experience a within-person reduction in later victimization and changes in self-esteem, depressive symptoms, and loneliness. We will present novel research employing a variety of empirical methodologies (e.g., virtual reality, peer-nominations), conducted in both Europe and Canada, to examine the phenomenon of peer defending from multiple theoretical and practical orientations. This knowledge may contribute to the development of interventions aimed at reducing bullying by promoting peer defending in schools.
Keywords
Peer Defending; Social Dominance; Group Dynamics; Social-Cognitive Processes; Psychological Adjustment
Additional field for symposia
Project #1
Presenter: Dr. Jeroen Pronk
Proposal Title: Defenders’ Other Roles in Bullying as Indicators of Defending Effectiveness: Low Profile, Antisocial, Pure, and Ambivalent Defenders’ Peer Status.
Proposal Abstract:
Although some anti-bullying programs stimulate defending victims, it is unclear whether defending effectively supports victims. One problem hampering research is that measures of defending not only reflect defending by pure defenders who only defend, but also defending by (1) low profile defenders who also are victims or outsiders and who can be assumed to lack social dominance and to only use indirect defending strategies (comforting victims rather than confronting bullies); (2) antisocial defenders who also are probullies (bullies and reinforcers) and who can be assumed to lack the prosocial attitude that underlies defending actual victims; and (3) ambivalent defenders who simultaneously are low profile and antisocial defenders. Because the severity of such a contamination of defending measures depends on the prevalence of defender types, we used peer nominations to classify the defenders among 6554 Dutch adolescents (Mage = 13.3, SD = .5; 48% boys) into defender types and in terms of whether they defended indirectly, directly, or in both ways. To test the assumptions mentioned above, we compared defender types to each other and to victims, outsiders, and probullies in terms of social dominance and, as a proxy for a prosocial attitude, social preference. Most defenders either were low profile defenders who primarily used indirect defending and who were low in social dominance, or antisocial or ambivalent defenders who were low in social preference. Accordingly, only a minority of those nominated as defenders were likely to effectively support actual victims of bullying.
Project #2
Presenter: Dr. Laura Lambe
Proposal Title: Group Dynamics and Peer Defending Behaviors: Insights from a Virtual-Reality Bullying Paradigm.
Proposal Abstract:
Our understanding of bystander intervention in school bullying has primarily come from survey-based research. Novel in-lab paradigms, such as virtual-reality (VR), offer a creative avenue to explore the person-in-context factors that lead to peer defending behaviors. The current research will present pilot data using an innovate, VR paradigm to examine how our relationships with others present in the bullying situation are associated with 1) the likelihood of intervention, and 2) the type of defending behavior used. Using VR equipment, participants (n=120 first-year undergraduate students) play a simple ball-tossing game with other “players” whom they perceive to be real using a cover story, with one player being systematically excluded from the game. Participants are randomly assigned to one of three conditions: in-group victimized (in-group member is left out), out-group victimized (out-group member is left out), and control (no group manipulation). During the task participants are prompted to send “messages” to the other players, which are coded for enacted defending behaviors (e.g., “I’m sorry you were left out, I’ll pass the ball to you more next time). Data collection for this project is currently underway. We hypothesize that rates of defending will be highest for the in-group victimized condition and will explore whether the type of defending behavior used (e.g., victim-oriented vs. bully-oriented, comforting vs. solution-focused) varies by condition. By systematically manipulating the factors that lead to different forms of peer defending behaviors in real-time, we can better understand how to design interventions to promote the conditions that foster bystander intervention.
Project #3
Presenter: Dr. Björn Sjögren
Proposal Title: Individual and Classroom Social-Cognitive Processes in Defending, Unconcerned Bystanding and Guilty Bystanding in School Bullying.
Proposal Abstract:
With reference to the social-cognitive framework, previous research has shown that greater defender self-efficacy (DSE) is linked to greater defending and less passive bystanding, while moral disengagement (MD) tends to be negatively associated with defending. Findings regarding the link between MD and passive bystanding are inconsistent, indicating a need for further research. In addition, only few studies have examined collective efficacy (CE) to stop peer aggression, showing that it is, as a classroom variable, related to greater defending and less passive bystanding. However, when students remain passive, it can happen in two different ways: unconcerned passive bystanding and guilty passive bystanding, which are still understudied. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether MD and DSE at the individual level, and CE at the classroom level were related to defending, unconcerned bystanding, and guilty bystanding in school bullying. Gender, age, and immigrant background were included as control variables. Self-reported survey data from 990 pre-adolescent Swedish students from 74 classrooms were analyzed using multilevel regression analyses. The findings revealed that students with greater DSE, less MD, and in classrooms with greater CE were more inclined to defend. In contrast, students with greater MD, less DSE, and in classrooms with less CE were more likely to respond as unconcerned bystanders, while students with both less MD and less DSE were more prone to respond as guilty bystanders. By distinguishing between guilty and unconcerned bystanders, this study contributes new insights into the roles of DSE, MD, and CE in bullying dynamics.
Project #4
Presenter: Cameron Hines (M.Sc.)
Proposal Title: The Influence of Prosocial Control Norms, Coercive Control Norms, Popularity, and Gender on Peer Defending in Adolescence.
Proposal Abstract:
Bullying is common in Canadian schools and harmful for victimized youth. Peer defending is an effective means of dissuading bullying in schools, but students rarely intervene on behalf of others. This study examined the influence of social norms and social status on peer defending in adolescence. Popular students engage in more peer defending than other students, as their social power increases their chance of success in these interactions. Defending may serve as a social signal, signaling the social dominance of the defender to others. Whether popular students use their power to defend others may be related to the norms about gaining and maintaining social dominance in their school. Specifically, popular students may be more likely to defend others in the context of high prosocial control norms (dominance acquisition via prosociality), than high coercive control norms (dominance acquisition via antisociality). This study examined whether resource control norms and gender influenced the peer defending behaviours of popular youth. We used two 3-level-multi-level-models to examine the influence of prosocial and coercive control norms on peer defending in N = 652 Canadian adolescents (Mage = 11.94, SD = 1.40). Results indicated that popularity was positively associated with peer defending. Further, the association between popularity and peer defending decreased for girls as prosocial control norms increased, and the association between popularity and peer defending increased with coercive control norms for boys and girls. These findings are interpreted from the perspective of signaling theory, and social norming theory, and implications for school-based interventions are discussed.
Project #5
Presenter: Dr. Lydia Laninga-Wijnen
Proposal Title: Does Defending Help? The Role of Peer Defending in Reducing Bullying Victimization and Enhancing Victims’ Psychological Adjustment
Proposal Abstract:
Because bullying is a group phenomenon, many anti-bullying interventions focus on peer bystanders and encourage them to defend victims. Surprisingly, there is a lack of empirical studies examining whether being defended actually helps victims of bullying by diminishing victimization and by improving their psychological adjustment (i.e., self-esteem, depressive symptoms, and loneliness). The aim of the current registered report was therefore to test, using latent change score modeling, whether defended victims experience a within-person decrease in victimization and psychological problems, and whether the decrease in victimization may (partially) explain the decrease in psychological problems. Out of the 6,470 4th to 9th grade Finnish students participating in the SOLID project, n = 1,493 students from 517 classrooms indicated to be victimized at the start of the school year (T1). A total of 1,121 students indicated that they were defended; 789 were defended in bully-oriented ways and 893 were defended in victim-oriented ways. Preliminary results indicate that being defended at T1 was concurrently related to lower victimization frequency and lower psychological problems at T1. However, being defended did not contribute to decreases in victimization several months later (T2). Alarmingly, it even related to small increases in psychological problems from T1 to T2, in particular for boys who were defended in victim-oriented ways. Possibly, the initial hope that victims of bullying may have when peers defend them ceases when they notice that it does not help them - leading them to feel helpless and experience distress. Final results will be discussed during the symposium.
| Please also indicate what kind of contribution it is: | Scientific |
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| Please indicate what type of scientific contribution it is | Quantitative method study |
