School bullying: types of bullying, moral disengagement, consequences, interventions, roles, and motivation to defend victims

Bullying is systematic, unprovoked, peer-to-peer abuse in the context of a power imbalance that involves several participant roles and has short- and long-term negative consequences for victims, bullies, and bystanders. Several anti-bullying programs have been developed to tackle this pervasive phenomenon. In this talk, I will give examples of various types of bullying, present the different roles that students take in bullying situations, and present important factors that may help or prevent bystanders to intervene when witnessing bullying. I will also present a couple of established anti-bullying programs. Finally, I will present one of my most recent studies on school bullying. The study examined whether moral disengagement is indirectly associated with various school bully roles and if the paths are mediated by different types of motivation to defend victims of school bullying among early adolescents. Participants were 901 upper elementary students from 43 school classes at 15 public schools in Sweden who completed a questionnaire in their ordinary classrooms. Mediation path analyses showed how moral disengagement in peer bullying was related to different types of motivation to take the victim’s side that mediated the association between moral disengagement and various roles.