Decreasing Bullying with Self-Affirmation: A Test of the Compensation Model

描述(由申请人提供)：欺凌和受害仍然是学龄儿童中的严重问题(Cook等人，2010年)。需要更多地了解这一行为过程，以制定更有效的干预和治疗措施，以实现提高儿童生活质量的目标。欺凌的一种理论是攻击性的补偿模型(Nail，Bihm和Simon，在出版社；Staub，)。它提出，欺凌主要是由欺负者的个性驱动的，因为欺负者试图通过支配他人来补偿或弥补自己的软弱和脆弱感觉。从本质上讲，欺负者的不安全感被认为是外向的，并转化为对他人的攻击--通常是那些身体较弱且容易获得的人，如较小的同学(Kaukiainen等人，2002)或欺负者的配偶(Gondolf，1985)。补偿模型得到了一些研究的支持，这些研究发现防御性人格结构与学校中的欺凌或攻击行为呈正相关(例如，Nail等人，在出版社； 桑德斯特罗姆和乔丹，2008)。防御性人格可以用不同的方式来定义，但其中一种是防御性利己主义--也就是说，学生们过于看重自己，总是想成为关注的中心。然而，薪酬支持模型的一个主要问题是，到目前为止，几乎所有的发现都是相互关联的，而该模型提出，防御性人格会导致欺凌。拟议的研究将解决这个问题。文献中明确指出，操控实验室威胁会导致攻击性增加，特别是对于那些具有防御性人格结构的人(例如，Bushman等人，2009年)。同样公认的是，通过允许人们肯定其自我形象的核心方面的干预措施，可以减少或消除威胁诱导的防御性(例如，McGregor，Nail等人，2005年)。尚不清楚的是，自我肯定干预是否会导致欺凌行为的减少。七年级学生的防御性利己主义将通过他们的同学和老师的报告进行评估。周一上午晚些时候，随机抽取的学生将写一篇文章，解释(A)为什么他们最重要的价值观对他们来说很重要(即，自我肯定的参与者)或(B)为什么他们最不重要的价值观对其他人(非自我肯定/控制参与者)变得重要。在那周的周五下午，学生和老师将分别报告因变量--过去一周内对同学和学生的欺凌和攻击性。如果补偿模型是正确的，只有非自我肯定/控制的参与者才会显示出防御性利己主义和欺凌/攻击性之间通常的正向联系。自我肯定的参与者应该不需要在那一周通过欺负他人来满足自己的自我，因为他们的自我概念将得到写作任务的支持。这些发现将表明，需要一种更全面的减少欺凌行为的模式-将目前全校的行政努力与针对欺凌行为的有针对性的治疗性干预相结合。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Bullying and victimization remain significant problems among school-age children (Cook et al., 2010). Greater understanding of this behavioral process is necessary to create more effective interventions and treatments toward the goal of improving the quality of life for children. One theory of bullying is the compensation model of aggression (Nail, Bihm, & Simon, in press; Staub, 1989). It proposes that bullying is driven primarily by the personality of the bully, as bullies attempt to compensate, or make up for, their own feelings of weakness and vulnerability by dominating others. Essentially, the bully's feelings of insecurity are thought to be turned outward and converted into aggression against others-typically those who are physically weaker and readily available, such as smaller classmates (Kaukiainen et al., 2002) or a bully's spouse (Gondolf, 1985). The compensation model has been supported by a number of studies that have found a positive correlation between a defensive personality structure and bullying or aggression in schools (e.g., Nail et al., in press; Sandstrom & Jordan, 2008). Defensive personality can be operationally defined in various ways, but one is defensive egotism-i.e., students who think too highly of themselves and always want to be the center of attention. A major problem with the support for compensation model, however, is that almost all of the findings to date have been correlational in nature, whereas the model proposes that a defensive personality causes bullying. The proposed research will address this problem. It is well established in the literature that manipulated laboratory threats can cause increases in aggression, especially for those with a defensive personality structure (e.g., Bushman et al., 2009). It is also well established that threat-induced defensiveness can be reduced or eliminated by interventions that allow people to affirm core aspects of their self image (e.g., McGregor, Nail et al., 2005). What is not known is whether self-affirmation interventions can cause decreases in bullying. The defensive egotism of seventh graders will be assessed by the reports of their classmates and teachers. Later on a Monday morning, randomly chosen students will write an essay explaining (a) why their most important values are important to them (viz., self-affirmation participants) or (b) why their least important values migt be important to others (non-self-affirmation/control participants). On Friday afternoon of that week, students and teachers will report the dependent variables-the bullying and aggression of their classmates and students, respectively, over the past week. If the compensation model is correct, only non-self- affirmation/control participants will show the usual positive link between defensive egotism and bullying/aggression. Self-affirmation participants should have little need to feed their ego by bullying others that week because their self-concept will have been bolstered by the writing task. Such findings will point to the need for a more holistic model of bullying reduction-one that combine's current whole-school, administrative efforts with targeted, therapeutic interventions for bullies.