Defender Role Combinations as Indicator of Defending Effectiveness: Implications for Effective Bullying Prevention Programs
other
Although some anti-bullying programs stimulate defending victims, it is unclear whether defending effectively supports victims. One problem hampering research is that measures of defending not only reflect defending by pure defenders who only defend, but also defending by (1) low profile defenders who also are victims or outsiders and who can be assumed to lack social dominance and to only use indirect defending strategies (comforting victims rather than confronting bullies); (2) antisocial defenders who also are probullies (bullies and reinforcers) and who can be assumed to lack the prosocial attitude that underlies defending actual victims; and (3) ambivalent defenders who simultaneously are low profile and antisocial defenders. Because the severity of such a contamination of defending measures depends on the prevalence of defender types, we used peer nominations to classify the defenders among 6554 Dutch adolescents (Mage = 13.3, SD = .5; 48% boys) into defender types and in terms of whether they defended indirectly, directly, or in both ways. To test the assumptions mentioned above, we compared defender types to each other and to victims, outsiders, and probullies in terms of social dominance and, as a proxy for a prosocial attitude, social preference. Most defenders either were low profile defenders who primarily used indirect defending and who were low in social dominance, or antisocial or ambivalent defenders who were low in social preference. Accordingly, only a minority of those nominated as defenders were likely to effectively support actual victims of bullying.
TNO Identifier
1015498
Publisher
TNO
Source title
Symposium the World Anti Bullying Forum (WABF) 2025, June 11-13, 2025, Stavanger, Norway
Collation
29 p.
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