What causes some adolescents' participation in bullying situations?

Résumé du document

In this paper, I try to explain why some adolescents participate to bullying situations. According to some articles and books on bullying, the main factors highlighted by the different authors that contribute on having such behavior are the self-esteem, the gender and age, the mental health the role of peers and the degree of aggressiveness. All those elements are developed and linked to adolescents'behavior facing teenager violence.

According to the Swedish researcher in psychology Dan Olweus, the bullying happens when a person is "exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other persons" and also he added that negatives actions occur "when a person intentionally inflicts injury or discomfort upon another person, through physical contact, through words or in other ways."(Olweus,1997). Bullying is a case of "imbalance of power" (Salmivalli et al. 1999) in the way where the bully chooses victims whom can't defend by themselves. This phenomenon is very frequent especially concerning children and adolescents.

Extraits

[...] Bullies and mental health Another suggestion of what causes some adolescents' participation in bullying situations is that bullying and rejection may overlap. Both bullies and victims are “described as suffering from more psychosomatic symptoms” (Meland et al. (2010). Researchers like Olweus (1996) state that some bullies, especially passive bullies and followers, are characterized by being anxious and insecure. In Meland et al.s' article, they analysed the link between bullying behaviour and emotional health by asking a set of 107 questions concerning health, social factors and lifestyle, to a group of 1237 pupils from grade 6 to 10 (it means from 11 to 15 years old). [...]

[...] In fact, teens concede easily to peer pressure; it is the case when individual “encourages others to change their attitudes, values, or behaviors to conform to group norms” (Wikipedia). Beside friends, the teachers are also important peers that can reduce bullying situations. Following the study conducted by Craig et al. (1998), there are four levels of peer involvement: “active participation in the episode, observing the interaction, involvement in an activity with the bully or victim and intervening in the interaction”. [...]

[...] What Causes Some Adolescents' Participation in Bullying Situations? 1 ADOLESCENTS' PARTICIPATION IN BULLYING SITUATIONS Abstract In this paper, I try to explain why some adolescents participate to bullying situations. According to some articles and books on bullying, the main factors highlighted by the different authors that contribute on having such behaviour are the self-esteem, the gender and age, the mental health the role of peers and the degree of aggressiveness. All those elements are developed and linked to adolescents' behaviour facing teenager violence. [...]

[...] Every child is exposed to observe aggression, especially at school. Indeed, “aggressive interactions (either physical or verbal) occurred once every 2.4 minutes in the playground” following the research on bullying in the classroom and playground school of Craig et al. (1998). But, observing aggression can also occurs in other situations like in watching television or playing violent videogames. The results of Huesman and Eron's study shown that viewing and particularly TV violence viewing and/or identification with TV characters relate strongly to overt aggression among boys in every country” (1984). [...]

[...] We have also seen that the rate of adolescent who participate in bullying situations, depends on the gender and the age and tends to decrease once they become young adults. So whom do we have to blame: Parents? Teachers? Television? Or is it just a usual childish behavior without any consequences of which we should not worry about? 9 ADOLESCENTS' PARTICIPATION IN BULLYING SITUATIONS References: Baumeister et al. (1996), Relation of Threatened Egotism to Violence and Aggression: The dark side of high self- esteem, Psychological Review Craig et al. [...]