Christina Salmivalli

Electronic Victimization: Correlates, Antecedents, and Consequences Among Elementary and Middle School Students

We examined the occurrence of electronic-only, traditional-only, and traditional and electronic bullying, and the antecedents and consequences of electronic versus traditional victimization. A large data set including 17,625 students from elementary (Grades 3–5) and middle school (Grades 7–8) was utilized to examine the prevalence of students with diverse victimization profiles. A longitudinal subsample of 7,850 students was used to test hypotheses regarding the antecedents and consequences of electronic victimization when occurring in isolation from traditional forms versus accompanied by them. According to the main findings, (a) the victims of electronic bullying were in most cases bullied in traditional ways as well; (b) being a target of electronic-only victimization was not predicted by either intrapersonal (depression) or interpersonal (low social acceptance) risk factors; and (c) electronic victimization, when occurring in isolation from traditional victimization, did not contribute to increases in depression over time. Electronic victimization is rare, and is almost always accompanied by traditional victimization. It leads to increases in depression only when combined with traditional victimization. Rather than shifting attention from traditional to electronic victimization, educators should continue their efforts on reducing victimization in general.

Different forms of bullying and victimization: Bully-victims versus bullies and victims

Although much is known about bully-victims, children who bully others and are victimized by others, the forms of bullying they employ and experience have received little attention. The present study examined the extent to which bully-victims (in comparison to pure bullies and pure victims) are perpetrators and targets of verbal, physical, indirect, and cyber bullying. The sample included 19,869 students from grades 1 to 8 (7 to 15 years of age). Bully-victims (whether identified by self- or peer-reports) perpetrated significantly more physical and verbal bullying than pure bullies. They also tended to score higher than bullies in cyberbullying, but not in indirect bullying. With respect to victimization, bully-victims were more frequent targets of all four forms of victimization than pure victims. The frequent victimization experiences of bully-victims may be one factor contributing to their high maladjustment reported in the literature. Challenges for teacher training and bullying interventions are discussed.

A longitudinal multilevel study of individual characteristics and classroom norms in explaining bullying behaviors

This three-wave longitudinal study was set out to examine the interplay between individual characteristics (social standing in the classroom) and descriptive and injunctive classroom norms (behavior and attitudes, respectively) in explaining subsequent bullying behavior, defined as initiating, assisting, or reinforcing bullying. The target sample contained fourth- to sixth-grade students (n = 2,051) who attended the control schools in the Finnish evaluation of the KiVa antibullying program. Random slope multilevel analyses revealed that, over time, higher popularity or rejection, or lower acceptance were associated with increases in bullying behaviors, especially in classrooms with a high descriptive bullying norm. In contrast, the injunctive norm did not moderate the associations between social standing and engagement in bullying, except for children high on popularity. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.

Forgiveness and its determinants depending on the interpersonal context of hurt

Children and adolescents encounter different hurtful experiences in school settings. How these events are processed (e.g., whether they think that the transgressor was hostile) is likely to depend on the relationship with the transgressor. In this study, we examined how adolescents (58 girls and 35 boys, mean age=14.03 years, SD=0.60) dealt with the hurt caused by someone they liked or disliked. Our findings show that the hurt caused by a disliked transgressor is likely to lead to more negative cognitive (e.g., hostile attributions), affective (e.g., feelings of anger), and motivational (e.g., avoidance/revenge) outcomes than the hurt caused by a liked peer. In addition, we found that associations between cognitive processes and avoidance/revenge were mediated by feelings of anger, but only when the transgression occurred in the context of disliking. These results highlight the importance of studying how adolescents process hurtful experiences in different relational contexts.

Same‐ and Other‐Sex Victimization: Are the Risk Factors Similar?

Risk factors for same- and other-sex victimization were examined in a longitudinal data set involving 9- to 14-year-old students. The findings regarding same-sex victimization supported the view that bullies select personally and interpersonally vulnerable targets in order to maximize their gains in status while minimizing loss of affection within their same-sex peer group. Although low self-esteem was a joint predictor of same- and other-sex victimization, rejection and lack of friends among other-sex peers failed to predict victimization by other-sex bullies, and being perceived as popular among other-sex peers increased the risk. Although the findings suggests that interpersonal risk factors for other-sex victimization differ from those found for same-sex victimization, they do not provide strong support for heterosexual interest being the basis for other-sex target selection, as suggested by some previous literature. As about half of the study participants were involved in the KiVa antibullying program, we had the possibility to examine whether the program effects were similar for same- and other-sex victimization. It turned out that in middle schools the program decreased only same-sex victimization, whereas in elementary school the decrease was observed regardless of the sex composition of bully-victim dyads.