Are victims of bullying primarily social outcasts?
Kaufman, Laninga-Wijnen & Lodder (2022) published “Are Victims of Bullying Primarily Social Outcasts? Person-group dissimilarities in relational, socio-behavioral, and physical characteristics as predictors of victimization” in Child Development. I like this study because it reminds us of the value of an “it all depends” approach to understanding bullying.
They begin by noting that, “According to the person-group dissimilarity model (Wright et al., 1986), deviating from the descriptive group norm—defined as the average levels of a certain behavior or characteristic in a group—can make individuals become ‘social outcasts’ and, therefore, rejected by the group; potentially, they can even become victims of bullying. In particular, this may be the case for developmentally salient characteristics such as forming stable social relationships and pubertal maturation.”
They define bullying as “repeated, goal-directed behavior that harms another individual in the context of a power imbalance and can take physical, verbal, relational (i.e., social exclusion and rumor spreading), and online forms (Olweus, 1993). . . . Individuals who are dissimilar to many peers already occupy a rejected and socially isolated position, and bystanding witnesses are less likely to convey their disapproval when adolescents who are dissimilar to them or to the group to which they belong are bullied (Huitsing et al., 2014). Moreover, these adolescents who deviate from group norms may also have fewer peers who stand up for them because they have less in common with their peers: Similarity breeds connection with others and young adolescents help those to whom they are similar and do not help those to whom they are dissimilar (van Rijsewijk et al., 2016). Thus, norm-deviating adolescents are easy targets to bully.”
They use social anxiety as an example of internalizing behavior and disruptive behavior as an example of externalizing behavior, suggesting that peers tend to notice both behaviors. They also included pubertal development as another characteristic that peers notice. They “expected that higher levels of dissimilarity predicted increased victimization only among adolescents who had fewer friendships or social media connections, or more social anxiety than the norm [and that] greater deviation in terms of both lower and higher levels of disruptive behaviors, and both earlier and later pubertal development than the classroom average would predict higher levels of victimization. Second, [they] expected that all person-group dissimilarity effects would be stronger in classrooms where peers were relatively homogeneous in their characteristics, than in classrooms where peers varied more significantly in their characteristics (heterogeneous classrooms).”
Their results are summarized as follows:
The fewer friends an individual had compared to the norm, the more they were victimized in the short term;
The fewer social media connections an individual had compared to the norm, the more victimized they were;
Being dissimilar from the norm in terms of being more anxious did not significantly predict victimization in this sample;
Being more dissimilar in individual disruptive behaviors to the classroom norm predicted more victimization;
More dissimilarity among those who acted less disruptively than the norm especially predicted victimization in more homogeneous classrooms;
The less disruptively individuals acted compared to the classroom norm, especially in more homogeneous classrooms, the more these individuals were victimized 3 months after the beginning of the school year. In contrast, 6 months after the beginning of the school year, it was especially risky to deviate more from the initial classroom norm in terms of acting more disruptively;
Deviating from same-gender classmates in one's stage of pubertal development did not predict victimization;
Regarding social anxiety, [e]specially in heterogenous classrooms, being more dissimilar to the norm predicted more victimization among those who were more socially anxious than the classroom average;
Regarding disruptive behavior, results showed negative person-group similarity effects of disruptive behaviors in a similar way as the bully-reported results did (yet only in the short term);
No gender differences emerged except for the long-term effects of disruptive behaviors. The person-group dissimilarity effect of acting more disruptively than the norm found in the main analyses seemed slightly stronger for boys than for girls;
The fewer reciprocated friendships individuals had compared to the norm, the more victimized they were, especially when peers were more similar in their number of friendships.
They conclude, in part:
Results indicated that the more adolescents deviated from their classroom's norm at the start of the school year, the more likely they were to be increasingly victimized throughout the school year. We observed this pattern among adolescents who had fewer friendships and social media connections (bully-reported victimization), were more socially anxious (self-reported victimization) or acted less or more disruptively (both bully- and self-reported victimization) than the norm. Greater deviation from the norm predicted more victimization over time among these individuals.
. . . . Although we can only speculate about the reasons why, it seems possible from a developmental perspective that similarity in interpersonal characteristics is especially important to early adolescent groups because it facilitates reaching developmental goals such as creating intimate peer relationships, collaborating in groups, and forming social identities, all of which are of heightened importance in this age period (Kindermann & Gest, 2018; Laursen & Veenstra, 2021). Adolescents might actively harass those who pose a threat to this homogeneity and fail to “blend in.” In addition, bullies who take lead might benefit from bullying peers who deviate from the group norms. These victims have fewer social resources because they are less defended by bystanders who are dissimilar to them (e.g., Veenstra et al., 2010). Therefore, bullies can signal their power to the group without losing affection.
When focusing on the effects across points in time, results for disruptive behaviors differed throughout the school year. Dissimilarity among those who acted less disruptively than the group norm, especially when others were homogeneous, predicted victimization 3 months after the start of the school year. By contrast, greater dissimilarity was also a risk factor for victimization among those who acted more disruptively than the group norm, but this effect took 6 months to unfold. This different timing makes sense: In a partly new classroom in which classmates are still exploring their own social position, it might seem dangerous to bully disrespectful individuals who start fights and safer to target those who are less cheeky. However, over time, classmates might dare to punish these disruptive actions in classrooms with a more prosocial norm.
Several interesting differences emerged when comparing these main findings that were based on a bully-report measure of victimization to findings from the sensitivity analyses that were based on a self-report measure of victimization. . . . Victims who are identified through peer-nomination measures generally are individuals with a poor position in the group, while self-identified victims are likely to be individuals with negative self-perceptions (Volk et al., 2017). . . . [S]elf-identified victims were especially more socially anxious than the group norm. This social anxiety might be a proxy for insecurity, making adolescents more prone to interpret certain ambiguous situations as “hostile.” Moreover, being socially anxious was self-reported and reflects an internal experience of affect that may not be visible to peers.
Moreover, only having more reciprocated friendships (and not unilateral, received nominations for) than most peers offers protection against self-reported victimization: Those who perceive that they have more social support might also perceive themselves less easily to be a victim of bullying.
In the end, this study may be helpful to clinicians who work with teens who are in minority positions in their schools.