Citation

Olthof T, Goossens FA, Vermande MM, Aleva EA, van der Meulen M. J. Sch. Psychol. 2011; 49(3): 339-359.

Affiliation

Department of Developmental Psychology, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Society for the Study of School Psychology, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jsp.2011.03.003

PMID

21640248

Abstract

To examine whether bullying is strategic behavior aimed at obtaining or maintaining social dominance, 1129 9- to 12-year-old Dutch children were classified in terms of their role in bullying and in terms of their use of dominance oriented coercive and prosocial social strategies. Multi-informant measures of participants' acquired and desired social dominance were also included. Unlike non-bullying children, children contributing to bullying often were bistrategics in that they used both coercive and prosocial strategies and they also were socially dominant. Ringleader bullies also expressed a higher desire to be dominant. Among non-bullying children, those who tended to help victims were relatively socially dominant but victims and outsiders were not. Generally, the data supported the claim that bullying is dominance-oriented strategic behavior, which suggests that intervention strategies are more likely to be successful when they take the functional aspects of bullying behavior into account.

Language: en