Bullying in Schools



Bullying in Schools

Introduction

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that close to 20% of students in grades nine through twelve are bullied on school property each year, and the researcher known as Nansel et al. in 2001 found that 30% of sixth to tenth graders have been victims of bullying. Other researchers have found that more than 50% of children have been involved in bullying, either as bullies or victims, at one point in their lives. In addition, 16% of all violent crimes are committed by juveniles, and perpetrators of school-related homicides are more than twice as likely as others to have been bullied by peers. Children who are bullied are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety, have low self-esteem, exhibit signs of helplessness and distress, be rejected by peers, feel general malaise, have migraines, and are more at risk for suicide. Similarly, bullies are at risk for broader criminality and aggression and are more likely to be truant and to develop substance abuse problems. Given the magnitude of this problem, it is not surprising that researchers have become increasingly interested in identifying the factors that contribute to bullying. By understanding which children are at risk for becoming bullies or victims, and why, different people can develop more targeted and more effective early interventions. Therefore, all the issues and aspects related to bullying schools will be discussed in detail.

Background of Bullying

In the last 10 to 15 years, researchers have begun to establish links between empathy and aggression and more recently, between empathy and bullying behavior specifically. The theoretical framework for this line of research is that empathy promotes the development of pro social behavior. Thus, if empathy inhibits aggression in general, empathy deficits likely plays a role in bullying behaviors specifically, in those children who have less empathy towards others, may be more prone to bullying them. The empathy literature is characterized by a wide variety of conceptualizations of empathy. Some have focused on cognitive aspects, others on pro social and/or altruistic behaviors and still others on affective responses. The researchers known as Jolliffe and Farrington in 2004 assert that empathy can be conceptualized as either being on a continuum (i.e., degrees of low to high empathy) or dichotomous (i.e., lack of empathy) (American Psychological Association, 2002).

For instance, a healthy empathic response is one where the observer of someone else's distress is able to cognitively recognize what that person is feeling (cognitive empathy), emotionally relate to that feeling (affective empathy), experiences a moderately heightened physiological reaction typically characterized by an increase in heart and respiratory rate (physiological empathy), and subsequently implements a behavioral response (empathic response). A disruption of any component of that process (cognitive, affective, physiological, or behavioral response) would be considered evidence of dysregulated empathy. Regulated, or healthy, empathy results from normal responses at the physiological, cognitive, affective, and behavioral levels. Dysregulated empathy implies that one or more of these four components is deficient. Additionally, pro social responding is dependent ...