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Introduction: Humour plays an important role in school bullying (e.g., Burger, 2022), as bullies may use humour to maintain power (e.g., Søndergaard, 2018), whereas victims may use humour to cope (e.g., Nixon et al., 2020). This study investigated student perceptions of the overlap between humour and bullying roles, and how these overlaps relate to students’ coping strategies.
Methods: Canadian students in grades 5-7 (N = 312; age = 9 -13 years; 52% girls) from 14 classes completed self-report questionnaires on coping strategies (active, avoidance, distraction and support seeking) and peer nominations for bullying, victimization, and sense of humour. Jaccard indices through peer network analysis were calculated to determine the proportion of humorous students who were also bullies or victims in each class.
Results: Network analysis revealed that, on average, 55% of bullies and 45% of victims were perceived as being humorous. Further, students in classes with higher victim-humour overlap were less likely to use active coping (Est = -0.69, SE = 0.21, p = .001). However, there was no significant relationship between the degree of bully-humour overlap and students’ coping strategies. Although results did not show significant sex differences, we found unique patterns of the relationship between bully- or victim-humour overlaps and coping strategies within boy and girl subgroups.
Conclusions: Altogether, this research indicates that humour plays an important role in how victims of bullying cope with stress. These findings have implications for promoting more adaptive coping skills for bullying victims.
| Please indicate what type of scientific contribution it is | Quantitative method study |
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| Please also indicate what kind of contribution it is: | Scientific |
