berger- violencia 2012

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International Journal of Behavioral Development2008, 32 (6), 473485

http://www.sagepublications.com

2008 The International Society for theStudy of Behavioural Development

DOI: 10.1177/0165025408093667

Bullies have power over their victims by definition. In hispioneering work on bullying at school, Olweus (1993, p. 10)stated that the term bullying is not (or should not be) usedwhen two students of approximately the same strength(physical or psychological) are fighting or quarreling. Of notehere is the equal footing of psychological and physical: powerdifferences between bullies and victims can take the form ofpsychological attributes like social status, social influence, andinterpersonal perception that are hard to quantify relative tophysical attributes like size and strength (cf., Lippitt, Polansky,Redl, & Rosen, 1952; Sherif, 1956). Psychological powerdifferentials continue to be a critical feature in how asymme-

tries between bullies and victims are conceptualized. Leff,Power, and Goldstein (2004, p. 270), in a discussion ofbullying methodology, reiterate the Olweus (1993) definitionand hypothesize that bullies should have higher social statusthan the victim.

Evidence regarding the relative social status of bullies andvictims is inconclusive (Boulton, 1999) because, in actuality,the social status of bullies and their victims has not beendirectly compared. Groups of children classified as bullies havebeen compared with groups of children classified as victims,but without dyadic understanding of who bullies whom socialstatus asymmetries between bullies and their victims cannot bedirectly ascertained. In this study, we introduce a survey instru-ment that asks children to identify bullies together with the

children whom each bully most often harasses.The new instru-ment is constructivist: children define for themselves what isbullying in the context of peers who to them exemplify bullyingbehavior. The instrument does not require children to adhereto common definitional components of bullying such as therepetition of bullying, the intent of the bully, or the status

relationship between bullies and victims. Indeed, the develop-ment of the who bullies whom measure derives from theneed to subject the status feature of bullying definitions toempirical scrutiny (Espelage & Swearer, 2003).

Using the who bullies whom measure, we examine twopotential sources of heterogeneity in social status asymmetriesbetween bullies and victims. The first source of heterogeneityconcerns whether social status is operationalized as socialpreference or perceived popularity. There is good reason tosuspect that perceived popularity will be more sensitive thansocial preference to status asymmetries between bullies andvictims. The second source of heterogeneity concernsgender.

Here we expect that boys who engage in cross-sex bullying mayhave physical but not psychological power (social status) overthe girls whom they harass.We elaborate on each of these twopossible sources of heterogeneity in turn.

Social status, social preference, perceived popularity

Olweus (2001, p. 7) implicated the dominant North Americanapproach to childrens peer relations in explaining why thesocial status of bullies was underappreciated. The NorthAmerican approach, according to Olweus (2001), tends tooperationalize social status as social preference (i.e., being highlyliked and hardly disliked) and to overemphasize connectionsbetween aggression and rejection. In essence, it made little

sense to study the psychological power of bullies whenaggressive children were viewed as generally rejected andmarginalized.

Recent studies of aggressive children, who may or may notbe bullies, make clear that aggressors can attain high socialstatus as long as social status is not defined exclusively as being

Who bullies whom? Social status asymmetries by victim gender

Philip C. Rodkin Christian BergerUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile

This study asks whether bullies have higher social status than their victims.Social status was measuredby social preference, popularity, and physical competence as perceived by children and teachers. Asurvey instrument was introduced to enable identification of specific victims associated with specificbullies.The sample was 508 fourth and fifth grade children from midwest U.S. elementary schools.Results indicated that peer- and teacher-perceived popularity were the optimal status measures forcapturing heterogeneity in bullyvictim status imbalances. In addition, the gender of victims of malebullying was critical. Powerful, popularaggressive bullies and unpopular victims were found in same-sex dyads, but unpopularaggressive boys were also identified as bullying popular girls. All bullieswere disliked. Implications are drawn for peer sexual harassment and for innovations in sociometrictechnology.

Keywords: bullying; gender; social status

Correspondence should be sent to Philip C. Rodkin, 232A Col.WolfeSchool, Mail Code 422, 403 E. Healey St., University of Illinois atUrbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois 61820; e-mail: [email protected] or Christian Berger, Facultad de Psicologa, UniversidadAlberto Hurtado, Almirante Barroso 26, Santiago 6500620, Chile;email: [email protected]

The research reported in this article was made possible by SmallGrant #20050079 from the Spencer Foundation. Christian Berger isa Fulbright / Fundacin Andes grantee.The views expressed are solelythe responsibility of the authors.We thank the school and the childreninvolved in this research and Gaebson (Sunny) Lee for her assistancein survey administration.


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widely liked and hardly disliked (Farmer, Estell, Bishop,ONeal, & Cairns, 2003; LaFontana & Cillessen, 2002;Parkhurst & Hopmeyer, 1998; Rodkin, Farmer, Pearl, & VanAcker, 2000; Zeller, Vannatta, Schafer, & Noll, 2003). Farmeret al. (2003), for example, identified subtypes of aggressivechildren among 419 rural African American seventh andeighth graders and obtained measures of popularity, prefer-ence, and social network prominence from students andteachers. Aggressive boys who were popular and prominentwere nonetheless overrepresented in the rejected sociometriccategory. Longitudinal evidence suggests that popularity andaggression may be positively related from middle childhood toadolescence (Cillessen & Mayeux, 2004; Rose, Swanson, &Waller, 2004). In their study of 905 children tracked fromgrades four through eight, Cillessen and Mayeux (2004)reported that aggression was negatively related to preferencebut positively related to peer perceptions of popularity. Positivecorrelations between popularity and aggression increased overgrades four to eight in what was referred to as a shift fromcensure to reinforcement of aggressive behavior.

Among bullies per se, the most direct examination ofpsychological power is by Vaillancourt, Hymel, and

McDougall (2003). Interestingly, Vaillancourt et al.s purposewas not to test whether bullies were powerful, but to questionwhether bullies were uniformly unpopular. Victims socialstatus was not ascertained. Subtypes of 555 Euro-Canadianbullies were identified in grades six through 10 and measuredon status characteristics including peer nominations of who ispowerful (Who can pressure others into doing things?), whois popular, who is liked and disliked, and power-relatedattributes like leadership, wealth, attractiveness, and athleti-cism. Bullies, also identified using peer nominations, varied intheir social power. Half of all bullies were labeled high powerand were popular and likeable, better looking, more likely tobe named as leaders, and showed trends towards greaterathleticism than bullies with less power. High power bullieswere more physically and relationally aggressive than bullieswith less power. All bullies were highly disliked.

The social status of bullies and victims have been comparedin a number of survey studies using a less extensive array ofstatus measures than in Vaillancourt et al. (2003). Boulton(1999) reviews this work and finds wide variation in reportedresults. With regards to social preference, both bullies andvictims are highly disliked. Victims are unlikely to be nomi-nated as liked most, but bullies receive liked most nominationsat proportional rates (Coie, Dodge, & Coppotelli, 1982;Graham, Bellmore, & Juvonen, 2003; Pellegrini, Bartini, &Brooks, 1999; Perry, Kusel, & Perry, 1988). Boulton (1999)did not find consistent trends in comparisons of perceived

popularity of bullies and victims, and he suggested that obser-vational methods that examine bullies and their victims withinthe same situation may better reveal the powerful and centralrole that bullies can enjoy. For example, OConnell, Pepler,and Craig (1999) observed playground behavior to identifyaggression among first through sixth graders that involvedbullies, their victims, and at least two nearby peers. Theyreported that bullying lasted longer when more peers werepresent, and that bullies were positively reinforced for theirbehavior 75% of the time, with peers intervening on the behalfof victims in only 25% of cases. In Boultons (1999) observa-tional study of 89 British eight- and nine-year-olds, bullies andvictims were low on social preference but male bullies affiliatedin larger peer groups than victims.

In sum, whether bullies enjoy social status over the childrenthey harass may depend on how social status is operationalizedand whether bullies and victims are examined conjointly withinthe same context. Our hypothesis in this study, using multiplemeasures of social status and a survey instrument that askschildren to name bullies and victims together, is that bullieswill be more popular but not more preferred than the childrenthey harass.

Bullying, victimization, and gender

Our starting point in the consideration of bullying, victimiza-tion, and gender is the proposition that, albeit with somevariation by bullying form (e.g., relational, physical), mostbullies are boys but victims are both boys and girls (Espelage,Mebane, & Swearer, 2004; Scheithauer, Hayer, Petermann, &Jugert, 2006; Schwartz, Proctor, & Chien, 2001; Solberg &Olweus, 2003). Olweus (1993, p. 18) outlined the algebraicconsequence of the preponderance of male bullies and themore similar prevalence rates of male and female victims byclaiming that boys carried out a large part of the bullying to whichgirls were subjected (italics in original): 60% of fifth through

seventh grade girls whom Olweus (1993) reported as beingharassed said that they were bullied by boys. Others find lowerprevalence rates of boygirl bullying (e.g., Craig, Pepler,Connolly, & Henderson, 2001; Pellegrini & Long, 2003;Russell & Owens, 1999).

There may be concurrent or predictive linkages betweenbullying and peer sexual harassment (McMaster, Connolly,Pepler, & Craig, 2002; Pellegrini, 2002; Rodkin & Fischer,2003). Although peer sexual harassment is often seen as apurely adolescent phenomenon, its origins may lie in middlechildhood (Adler & Adler, 1998; Maccoby, 1998). TheAmerican Association of University Women (AmericanAssociation of University Women Educational Foundation[AAUW], 2001, p. 25) reported that 38% of girls who experi-ence sexual harassment say they first experienced it inelementary school. Stein (1995) argues that peer sexualharassment in middle childhood is a form of bullying, openingher essay with an unforgettable account of a fifth grade girlwho is repeatedly attacked by a boy in ways that clearlyresemble dating and domestic violence yet the girls requestsfor help are belittled by the teacher. Steins (1995) Bullyproof-ing protocol for fourth and fifth graders and their teachersencourages participants to realize the linkages betweenelementary school bullying and sexual harassment.

Malemale aggression is more prevalent than malefemaleaggression (Pellegrini, 2007; Russell & Owens, 1999), butthere is ample reason to expect that children will name a

substantial proportion of boys bullying girls when given theopportunity. One advantage of the who bullies whom measureis that children can spontaneously nominate mixed-sex dyads.In the notoriously tense gender climate of middle childhood(Adler & Adler, 1998; Maccoby, 1998), boys and girls rarelychoose one another as best friends or affiliate in the samegroups but negative relationships are easily apparent. Under-wood, Schockner, and Hurley (2001) placed 8-, 10-, and 12-year-olds in an experiment where they were teased by either asame- or opposite-sex confederate while losing at a computergame. Children who were teased by an opposite-sex peershowed more negative facial expressions, made more negativeremarks, displayed more negative gestures, and were less likelyto want to befriend their provocateur. Rodkin, Pearl, Farmer,

474 RODKIN AND BERGER / WHO BULLIES WHOM?


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and Van Acker (2003) assessed sociometric relationships ofantipathy by identifying dyads of third and fourth gradechildren who nominated one another as liked least. Overthree assessment periods, between 40 and 50% of antipathydyads included one boy and one girl (see also Abecassis,Hartup, Haselager, Scholte, & Van Lieshout, 2002). Thesestudies, which show childrens sensitivity to cross-sex teasingand the high prevalence of boygirl dyads of dislike, lead us toexpect that we will find cross-gender bullying once we ask whobullies whom.

We also expect to find that the definitional pattern of apowerful bully and powerless victim will not characterize caseswhere boys bully girls, at least with regards to psychologicalpower. Evolutionary theory suggests that status-conferringproperties of bullying will hold only in male, same-sexinstances as dominance and resource allocations are estab-lished within peer groups of boys (Bjorklund & Pellegrini,2002; Buss, 1999). Sroufe, Bennett, Englund, Urban, andShulman (1993) studied 47 10- and 11-year-olds at summercamp and found that boys who were unusually aggressivetowards girls violated gender norms of separation, weredisliked by peers, and were perceived by camp counselors as

socially incompetent. Conversely, females who are the victimsof male bullying may not resemble low-status male victims butinstead could be popular girls singled out for harassment byunpopular, socially incompetent boys, possibly as part of aninappropriate strategy for expressing romantic interest (Adler& Adler, 1998; Duncan, 1999; Maccoby, 1998; McMaster etal., 2002; Pellegrini, 2002). An alternative hypothesis would bethat boys who mainly harass girls enjoy social status becausethey exemplify and extend negative middle childhood gendernorms. The Olweus (1993) description of power asymmetriesdoes not consider cross-sex bullyvictim dyads even thoughOlweus raised the problem of cross-sex bullying.

Our analytic strategy follows in three parts. First, becausethe who bullies whom measure is a new instrument, weconduct descriptive analyses of the prevalence, stability, andbehavioral characteristics associated with bullying and victim-ization.This helps us assess the strengths and limitations of themeasure. Then we turn to the overarching study hypothesisthat variation will qualify any general proposition on how socialstatus is apportioned among bullies and victims. In the secondsection we examine how social status is operationalized. Weexpect that bullies should be seen as more popular than thechildren they harass, but not as more preferred. In the thirdsection we analyze the gender composition of bullyvictimdyads. Our hypothesis is that social status asymmetries shouldfavor male bullies whose victims are mainly boys, but not malebullies who predominately target girls.

Method

Participants

The sample consisted of 508 fourth and fifth grade children(275 boys, 233 girls; ages 1011) recruited from two elemen-tary schools in the midwestern USA. The first school had 17classrooms (215 boys, 175 girls) and was over 98% EuropeanAmerican; the second school had five classrooms (60 boys, 58girls) with an ethnic breakdown of 66.7% European American,23.9% African American, and


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1.7%; bully/victims: 2.9% vs. 1.7%). The percentage of bulliesand bully/victims who were nominated in tandem with particu-lar victims is given in the victim specified rows of Table 1;conversely, victim not specified rows give the percentage ofbullies and bully/victims without a victim on whom at least twonominators agreed. In the case of victims, participants wereconsidered as such if they were identified by at least two class-mates as victim of a specific bully; in other words, all victimsidentified in this study were identified as such as part of abullyvictim dyad. Children were likely to associate particularvictims with particular male bullies: 70% of male bullies (23 of33) were nominated with peer consensus on children whomthey harassed. Nominators were less likely to identify particu-lar victims for the small number of female bullies (25% or 1of 4) or for bullies who were victims themselves (25% or 3 of12). Because of the small number of female bullies all subse-quent analyses are restricted to male bullies only.

Stability. The who bullies whom measure was re-administeredin spring to children within the larger of the two schoolssampled in the fall (n = 390 of 508, 77%). Table 2 shows astrong association between the distribution of bullies, victims,

bully/victims, and neither bullies nor victims (2(9,N= 390)= 206, p < .001). Over half of children classified in fall as avictim (51.9%) or bully (55.6%) retained this classificationinto spring; 86% of children who were not involved in fallbullying or victimization remained uninvolved into spring.Thebully/victim category was unstable: fall bully/victims tended tomigrate into a straight bully (42.9%) or victim (28.6%)

pattern. The marginal distribution of the full sample (i.e.,Table 1 total column) was compared to the marginal distri-butions of fall (i.e., Table 2 total column) and spring (i.e.,Table 2 total row) subsamples.There were no differences [fall:2(3)p < 1; spring: 2(3) = 7.01,p > .05], indicating similarproportions of bullies, victims, and bully/victims throughout.Because of the interchange of bully/victims with bullies andvictims, fall-to-spring stability coefficients (cf., Kochenderfer-Ladd & Wardrop, 2001) were calculated among bullies (i.e.,aggregate of bully and bully/victim) and victims (i.e., aggregateof victim and bully/victim). Stability coefficients weremoderate for victims (r(26) = .37, p = .05) and strong forbullies (r(15) = .61,p < .01).

A substantial proportion of bullyvictim dyads appeared tobe stable from fall to spring. There were 21 malemale dyadsin both fall and spring assessments; of these 9 (42.9%) weredurable across the year. There were 47 malefemale dyads inthe fall and 48 in the spring; 24 (51%) of the fall dyadsremained in spring.These percentages are not independent asbullies and victims could be involved in multiple dyads. Bullieswere nominated in tandem with an average of 3.31 (SD =2.13) victims. Across both assessment waves children named

over twice as many malefemale as malemale bullyvictimdyads. Independent stability estimates were obtained by corre-lating the percentage of bully nominations received and thenumber of victims specified among the 17 bullies (includingbully/victims) identified in the fall subsample (15 + 2, see Table2). Stability was strong for both measures (percentage of bullynominations: r(15) = .66,p < .005; number of victims: r(15) =.73,p < .001).

Bullies with and without specified victims. According to peers,bullies with specified victims were more relationally [M(SD) =2.42 (0.76) vs. 1.19 (0.73), t(39) = 5.01,p < .001] and overtly[M(SD) = 2.28 (0.92) vs. 1.22 (1.03), t(39) = 3.38,p < .005]aggressive than bullies without specified victims. Likewise,teachers rated bullies with specified victims as more aggressive[M(SD) = 1.40 (0.77) vs. 0.67 (0.77), t(35) = 2.78,p < .01].The two bully types did not differ on any other peer, teacher,or self reported measure.

Social status and socialpersonality characteristics ofbullies and victims

This section features comparisons of the popularity, prefer-ence, and socialpersonality characteristics of bullies, victims,and bully/victims as obtained through the who bullies whommeasure during the fall assessment. The first set of compari-sons contrasts children classified as bullies, victims, and

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2008, 32 (6), 473485 477

Table 1

Percentage (number) of children identified as bullies,victims, or

bully/victims

Bullyvictim category Boys Girls Total

Victims 9.1 (25) 18.0 (42) 13.2 (67)

Bullies 12.0 (33) 1.7 (4) 7.3 (37)Victims specified 8.4 (23) 0.4 (1) 4.7 (24)Victims not specified 3.6 (10) 1.3 (3) 2.6 (13)

Bully/victims 2.9 (8) 1.7 (4) 2.4 (12)Victims specified 1.1 (3) 0.0 (0) 0.6 (3)Victims not specified 1.8 (5) 1.7 (4) 1.8 (9)

Neither 76.0 (209) 78.5 (183) 77.1 (392)

Total 54.1 (275) 45.9 (233) 100 (508)

Note. Percentages within a column sum to 100 over the fourbullyvictim categories, and across the total row.

Table 2

Stability from fall to spring of bullying and victimization

Wave 2 (spring)

Wave 1 (fall) Victims Bullies Bully/victims Neither Total

Victims 51.9 (27) 1.9 (1) 1.9 (1) 44.2 (23) 13.3 (52)Bullies 3.7 (1) 55.6 (15) 7.4 (2) 33.3 (9) 6.9 (27)Bully/victims 28.6 (2) 42.9 (3) 0.0 (0) 28.6 (2) 1.8 (7)Neither 11.5 (35) 2.0 (6) 0.3 (1) 86.0 (262) 77.9 (304)Total 16.7 (65) 6.4 (25) 1.0 (4) 75.9 (296) 100 (390)

Note. Number of participants are given in parentheses.


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bully/victims. The second set contrasts bullies with thespecific victims they harass.

Between-group comparisons. Table 3 displays differencesbetween bullies, victims, and bully/victims on standardizedpeer nominations as tested through a series of one-wayanalyses of variance (ANOVAs) with Tukey HSD post-hoctests. With regards to the three status measures of socialpreference, perceived popularity, and physical competence,results indicate that victims were more highly preferred thanbullies (Z: 0.15 vs. 1.11) but bullies and victims were similarand near average on perceived popularity and physicalcompetence. Bully/victims received very few nominations onany status measure. Social preference was disaggregated intoliked most and liked least components and compared acrossbullies, victims, and bully/victims. Results for liked least were

significant (F(2,113) = 23.1,p < .001): bullies (Z= 1.13) andbully/victims (Z = 1.74) were highly disliked but victimsreceived only average levels of dislike (Z= 0.02). Results forliked most were marginally significant (F(2,113) = 2.95, p 1.0) but victims were average on aggression(Z= 0.18). Bullies and victims had comparable, average scoreson prosocial behavior (|Z|s 0.20) but bully/victims were notprosocial (Z= 1.12). Teachers rated victims as more academ-ically competent than bullies (Zs = 0.01 vs. 0.60), withbully/victims falling between the two (M= 0.20). There wereno differences on shyness. The lower panel of Table 4 presentsself-rated characteristics. No significant differences betweenbullies, victims, and bully/victims emerged from the ICS-S.

Comparisons between bullies and their victims. Differences onpeer- and teacher-report variables between bullies (includingbully/victims) and the average scores of their victims werecalculated and submitted to one-sample (i.e., paired) t-tests.On peer nominations, victims were more highly preferred thanbullies [M(SD) = 0.94 (2.36), t(25) = 2.04,p = .05] due tolower levels of dislike only [M(SD) = 0.82 (1.73), t(25) =2.43, p < .05; liked most: t < 1]. Bullies and victims were

similar on perceived popularity and physical competence. Inaddition, bullies were more relationally aggressive [M(SD) =2.23 (0.96), t(25) = 11.8, p < .001], overtly aggressive [M(SD) = 1.93 (1.31), t(25) = 7.50,p < .001], and less prosocial[M (SD) = 0.55 (1.25), t(25) = 2.25, p < .05] than theirvictims. According to teachers, bullies were more aggressive[M(SD) = 1.07 (1.20), t(22) = 4.30,p < .001], less academ-ically competent [M(SD) = 0.54 (1.11), t(22) = 2.33, p 50%, n = 15) and compared using two-sample t-testson peer perceived and teacher-assessed popularity.These testswere significant (p < .01) and showed that boys who bulliedboys were popular according to peers (M= 0.83, SD = 1.35)and moderately popular according to teachers (M = 0.25,SD = 1.29). Boys who bullied girls were unpopular accordingto peers (M= 0.74, SD = 0.49) and teachers (M= 1.00,SD = 0.89). Disaggregation of the ICS-T Popularity factorrevealed that boys who bullied girls were rated as being un-popular among both girls (r= .50, p < .05) and boys (r=.42,p < .05).

Male versus female victims of male bullying. Male and femalevictims of male bullying were compared by grouping the social

and personality characteristics described in Tables 3 and 4 intothree conceptually distinct sets. The measures within each setwere used as dependent variables in three MANOVAs (orHottelings T2) with gender as a between-subjects factor. Set1 included seven variables that index social status (peerperceived popularity, peer physical competence, peer socialpreference, teacher popularity, teacher olympian, self popular-ity, self olympian). Set 2 included three variables that indexaggression (peer, teacher, and self; relational and overt aggre-gated). Set 3 included the eight remaining socialpersonalitycharacteristics (peer prosocial, peer shy, teacher prosocial,teacher academic, teacher shy, self academic, self affiliative,self shy).

MANOVAs indicated victim gender differences among Set

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1 status measures (F(1,7,43) = 3.35, = .647,p = .006), butnot in Sets 2 or 3 (F < 1). Five of the seven social statusmeasures were significant in follow-up univariate tests[p .001: Peer Popularity (F = 12.4), Self Popularity (F =11.4);p .01: Teacher Popularity (F= 8.06), Peer Olympian(F = 7.75); p .05: Peer Social Preference (F = 5.81); ns:

Teacher Olympian (F= 2.82, p = .10), Self Olympian (F

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