Bullying leads to ingrained pessimism
Adolescents think school bullying ‘will keep on happening’ and
resign themselves to it Most of the adolescents think that bullying in
the school context “has always happened and will continue happening,”
and present “a negative, pessimistic and resigned attitude” towards this
social problem, which makes difficult the intervention and leaves few
hopes for its eradication.
Those are the conclusions of a thesis carried out at the department
of Evolutionary and Education Psychology of the University of Granada
(Spain), which warns that, from the viewpoint of psycho-pedagogical
action, “it is necessary to prove to the children that this type of
behaviour does not have to go on forever, and that it is possible to do
something to stop them” through more complete educative programmes.
This work, whose objective was to find out the representation of
adolescents about the phenomenon of bullying, has been conducted by
professor Mª Jesús Caurcel Cara, and supervised by professors Fernando
Justicia Justicia (UGR), Ana Mª Tomás Almeida (Universidade do Minho,
Portugal) and Mª del Carmen Pichardo Martínez (UGR).
To carry out this work, the authors conducted a survey on 1,237
children aged between 11 and 16 years from Granada and Braga (Portugal),
who completed a questionnaire in order to get to know their perception
about ‘bullying’. The researchers confirmed that, in school centres
studied, there are conducts of victimization with an incidence rate of
7.3% of victims, 8.5% of abusers and 84.1% of audience ‘children’.
Bullying, “something natural”
Mª Jesús Caurcel has ascertained that “bullying in getting more and
more integrated in the daily routine of interaction among groups of
peers, is considered as something natural and has certain social
approval.” Schoolchildren approve abusers’ behaviour, and leave the
victim isolated and unprotected.
The questionnaire applied to children revealed that, to describe the
major figures of bullying, the participants use social stereotypes,
characterizing their victims as passive persons, socially incompetent
and who experiences unpleasant emotional states of anxiety, depression
and insecurity; and the abuser as a strong, brave and extrovert person
who experiences pleasant emotional states (a happy victimizer) which
give him power and self-confidence, reinforce his/her status in the
group and inhibit other social motivations to end up with the abuses.
Differences by sex
The research work carried out at the UGR has also proved that there
are differences depending on sex on the social schoolchildren’s
perception of bullying. Girls condemn abuses in a more critical way,
respond with unpleasant emotions to them, reject this kind of situations
and show more empathy to the victims, describing them with a wide set of
positive characteristics, admitting their suffering and being able to
share their emotional state.
On the other hand, boys highlighted in their categorizations the
vulnerability and the moral responsibility of the victims and asserted,
“they should feel guilty and ashamed”.
Differences by age
As regards the differences found depending on the age of the
participants in the study, the most accused differences were found among
pre-adolescents aged between 11 and 12 years old and adolescents aged 15
years. “The perception of the victims’ vulnerability and the intensity
of the rejection against abusers became accentuated as adolescents grew
older, which is due to a higher internalization of the social rules by
children,” explains Caurcel.
The study carried out at the UGR has permitted to detect connections,
regularities and risk and protection factors which could be useful as
starting points to implement appropriate, consistent and realistic
interventions in the schools studied. In addition, it will contribute to
determine the blocks to work with for direct intervention programs
useful to help adolescents to get out of such a spiral of unjustified
violence by themselves, with the support of the entire Education
Community.
Part of the results of the research work has published in the Revista
Iberoamericana de Diagnóstico y Evaluación Psicológica, Electronical
Journal of Research in Educational Psychology, Revista de Educación de
la Universidad de Granada, Interamerican Journal of Psychology or the
European Journal of Education and Psychology.
- sciencedaily.com
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