title: Bullying as strategic behavior: relations with desired and acquired dominance in the peer group.
abstract: To examine whether bullying is strategic behavior aimed at obtaining or maintaining social dominance, 1129 9- to 12-year-old Dutch children were classified in terms of their role in bullying and in terms of their use of dominance oriented coercive and prosocial social strategies. Multi-informant measures of participants' acquired and desired social dominance were also included. Unlike non-bullying children, children contributing to bullying often were bistrategics in that they used both coercive and prosocial strategies and they also were socially dominant. Ringleader bullies also expressed a higher desire to be dominant. Among non-bullying children, those who tended to help victims were relatively socially dominant but victims and outsiders were not. Generally, the data supported the claim that bullying is dominance-oriented strategic behavior, which suggests that intervention strategies are more likely to be successful when they take the functional aspects of bullying behavior into account.
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental Psychology, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. T.Olthof@psy.vu.nl
authors.forename: Tjeert
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Olthof
authors.forename: Frits A
authors.initials: FA
authors.lastname: Goossens
authors.forename: Marjolijn M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Vermande
authors.forename: Elisabeth A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Aleva
authors.forename: Matty
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: van der Meulen
mesh_terms: D058445:Bullying / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D010379:Peer Group; D012574:Schools; D012930:Social Dominance; D012931:Social Environment; D013334:Students