NCJ Number
212454
Journal
Journal of School Violence Volume: 4 Issue: 1 Dated: 2005 Pages: 5-27
Date Published
2005
Length
23 pages
Annotation
This study examined the narrative strategies employed by both victims and bullies to interpret social incongruence in Italy and Spain.
Abstract
Bullying is a serious form of social aggression that is marked by intention, persistence, and imbalance. The current study sought to investigate the cognitive processes involved in bullying within a narrative framework. In particular, the authors examined whether bullies and victims used different narrative strategies to account for two different types of social incongruence (progressive incongruence and regressive incongruence) as well as whether these narrative strategies were consistent across two countries: Italy and Spain. Participants were 598 secondary school students from Florence, Italy and 704 secondary school students from Seville, Spain who were identified via a peer nominated questionnaire as bullies, victims, or control subjects. They were directed to read and respond to six stories dealing with themes of social incongruence between two peers; three stories contained negative violating acts (regressive stories) while the three other stories contained positive acts (progressive stories). Participants were asked to write a narrative of what happened before the interaction described in the stories. Data were analyzed in terms of three aspects: locus of antecedent, mental verbs, and social intention. Results of statistical analyses indicated that both the Italian and Spanish participants relied on internal strategies to interpret the progressive stories and relied on external strategies to interpret the regressive stories. Cross-cultural differences emerged for the bullies: Italian bullies used fewer internal and external strategies than control subjects while Spanish bullies relied on more internal and hostile strategies than victims. Implications for practice are discussed, which highlight the fact that bullying may be grounded in how children interpret their standing in social relations. Future research should focus on cross-cultural differences in bullying with larger samples. Tables, references, appendix