title: Interpretations of bullying by bullies, victims, and bully-victims in interactions at different levels of abstraction.
abstract: According to the Social Information Processing Model of children's adjustment, children develop general interpretation styles for future social events based on past social experiences. Previous research has shown associations between interpretations of social situations and internalizing and externalizing symptoms. This study investigated whether bullies, victims, bully-victims, and uninvolved children interpreted ambiguous human interactions differently in terms of bullying and whether these interpretations generalized to abstract non-human interactions. Participants were 390 children (49% girls, Mage  = 10.3 years) who completed self-report measures of bullying and victimization. In addition, they indicated whether video fragments of positive, negative, or ambiguous interactions between humans, animals, and abstract figures depicted bullying situations. Bully-victims reported more bullying than victims and uninvolved children in ambiguous abstract figure, animal, and human fragments and in positive animal fragments. Children who bully did not differ from the other groups. These findings indicate that interpretations of bullying generalized from ambiguous human interactions to more abstract ambiguous animal and abstract figure interactions. Implications for further research and practice were discussed.
authors: Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors: J Loes
authors: JL
authors: Pouwels
authors: Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors: Ron H J
authors: RH
authors: Scholte
authors: Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors: Tirza H J
authors: TH
authors: van Noorden
authors: Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors: Antonius H N
authors: AH
authors: Cillessen
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000374:Aggression / Q000523:psychology*; D058445:Bullying; D002648:Child; D019548:Crime Victims / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D057566:Self Report; D012938:Social Perception; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
keywords: bullying; perception; social information processing; victimization