Ganging up or sticking together? Group processes and children's responses to text-message bullying.
Drawing on social identity theory and intergroup emotion theory (IET), we examined group processes underlying bullying behaviour. Children were randomly assigned to one of three groups: a perpetrator's group, a target's group, or a third party group. They then read a gender-consistent scenario in which the norm of the perpetrator's group (to be kind or unkind towards others) was manipulated, and an instance of cyberbullying between the perpetrator's group and a member of the target's group was described. It was found that group membership, group norms, and the proposed antecedents of the group-based emotions of pride, shame, and anger (but not guilt) influenced group-based emotions and action tendencies in ways predicted by social identity and IET. The results underline the importance of understanding group-level emotional reactions when it comes to tackling bullying, and show that being part of a group can be helpful in overcoming the negative effects of bullying.
School of Psychology, Cardiff University, UK. jonesse21@cf.ac.uk
Siân E
SE
Jones
Antony S R
AS
Manstead
Andrew G
AG
Livingstone
D000786:Anger / Q000502:physiology; D058445:Bullying / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology*; D040421:Cell Phone; D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology*; D034742:Electronic Mail; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006126:Group Processes; D006167:Guilt; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010379:Peer Group; D012752:Shame; D012919:Social Behavior; D012933:Social Identification; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires