14 DAY TRIAL // Investigators with the University of California in Riverside (UCR) found in a new study that bullying-type behaviors are more complex than originally assumed. The work also revealed the influence that the overall climate at any particular school has on the development or impairment of this trend.
The research was able to determine that bullying waxes and wanes depending on how school culture changes. The effects can take place relatively fast, within as little as a year. These conclusions could potentially inform campaigns to reduce the incidence of bullying in public schools around the world.
One of the most significant conclusions in the new study was that schools where administrators promote and encourage display of empathy, and appropriate interactions between the student and teacher bodies, are more likely to exhibit fewer cases of bullying over any time frame.
When less empathy is available to go around, particularly among students, then the stage is set for more cases of antisocial behaviors. Full details of the investigation appear in a paper published in the latest issue of the scientific journal Theory Into Practice.
In the paper, the research group calls for the development of reliable tools for evaluating the climate and culture of individual schools. Based on such analyses, administrators could then take customized preemption measures that could be significantly more efficient at curbing bullying than existing ones.
“Bullying is a very complex problem. With this research, we’re really trying to provide school personnel with some proven steps to address the problem,” explains UCR expert Cixin Wang, PhD. The scientist was also one of the coauthors of the new paper.
A positive school climate, the team found, was only possible when children and teachers had a positive relationship, and when they shared a negative attitude towards antisocial behaviors. If students and teachers diverged in opinions on what constitutes negative attitudes, then the incidence of bullying did not show any signs of abating.
The study also revealed that, on average, children engaged in bullying others were far more likely to experience mental health difficulties than their peers who behaved normally. At the same time, this group also exhibited a higher levels of cognitive distortions overall.
This implies that administrators or principals may help bullies by asking them to participate in therapy sessions with psychiatrists or school counselors, PsychCentral reports