Social Influences and Social Desirability on Recollections of Childhood Bullying

Parents and peers play important roles in shaping attitudes toward a variety of matters during adolescence. However, little research has investigated parental and peer influence on developing attitudes toward bullying. Further, few studies have looked at whether socially desirable responding (SDR) impacts self-reports in bullying research. To address these gaps in literature, the current study recruited college students from a mid-sized public university in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States to complete a survey. The survey assessed the participants’ past attitudes toward bullying, perceptions of their parents’ and peers’ influence on their attitudes, and bullying participant roles during their 7 and 8 grade years. The survey also assessed participants’ tendencies to respond in socially desirable ways. Results indicated that while participants reported both their parents and peers as significantly influential on their past attitudes, they perceived their parents as more influential and the two sources of influence were found to interact with one another. This interaction revealed that when parental influence is low, stronger peer influence is associated with weaker anti-bullying attitudes. Finally, a significant relationship between SDR and bully-victims were found, but results did not show that SDR was related to participants’ past attitudes or that bullying participant roles acted as a significant moderator. Implications, limitations, and future directions were discussed as well. SOCIAL FACTORS ON ATTITUDES 1 Social Influences and Social Desirability on Recollections of Childhood Bullying Chapter I: Introduction Recent research suggests that interventions designed to reduce bullying within schools may only produce modest reductions and that the reductions may not be sustained over time (e.g., Cantone et al., 2015; Gaffney et al., 2018; Zych et al., 2015). To increase the efficacy of intervention designs, researchers need to gain a greater understanding of the dynamics underlying bullying. One potentially informative area of research is the influence parents and peers have on adolescents’ attitudes toward bullying. For example, it is generally accepted that parents and peers both exert significant influence in adolescents’ lives (Brauer & De Coster, 2012), but it is unclear the degree to which either party influences attitudes toward bullying. In a study investigating adolescents’ perceptions of their parents’ and peers’ influence on their attitudes about a range of issues (e.g., curfew, fashion, dating), it was found that both groups were significantly influential but for different issues (Daddis, 2008). However, attitudes related to aggression or bullying were examined. To address this gap in the literature, one aim of the current study was to examine the influence parents and peers have on attitudes toward bullying during adolescence. In addition to parental and peer influence, social desirability may be another important factor in bullying studies that use self-reports. Although socially desirable responding (SDR) is a well-known phenomenon in social science research, its actual measurement may be underutilized. For example, when van de Mortel (2008) examined 14,275 studies published between 2004 and 2005 that used self-reports, it was found that only 31 studies (.2%) measured SDR. Further, of the 31 studies that did assess for SDR, 43% found that SDR significantly influenced their results. Van de Mortel (2008) suggested that the likelihood of SDR impacting a SOCIAL FACTORS ON ATTITUDES 2 study’s results depends on the degree to which the questionnaire items are regarded as socially sensitive and, likewise, that questionnaires containing sensitive items should assess for SDR. Although previous research has demonstrated that SDR plays a significant role when reporting some aggressive acts, such as intimate partner violence (Henning et al., 2005), its impact on bullying attitudes and behaviors is relatively unexplored. In response, another aim of the current study was to explore the influence that social desirability has on bullying questionnaires. Review of Literature Definition of Bullying Various studies have shown that parents (Smorti et al., 2003), students (Boulton et al., 1999), and teachers (Naylor et al., 2006) all conceptualize bullying in slightly different ways; however, researchers often utilize a definition developed by Olweus in the 1980s when designing bullying studies. Olweus (1993a) stated that bullying is generally characterized by repetitive, intentional, negative actions directed toward an individual by another individual, or sometimes a group, who enjoy a power differential over the victim. Further, Olweus (1993a) explained that the negative actions could be either direct or indirect depending on whether they were openly displayed (e.g., physical attacks) or covertly executed (e.g., social exclusion). In addition to categorizing bullying as direct or indirect, researchers have also classified acts of bullying according to the method used to harm the victim (i.e., physical, verbal, or relational methods). Perhaps the most well-known subtype is physical bullying which involves negative actions intended to cause bodily harm or threats of such actions (e.g., tripping and hitting; Olweus, 1993a). On the other hand, verbal bullying involves negative communication intended to cause emotional or psychological harm (e.g., name-calling, teasing, taunting; Olweus, 1993a). Lastly, relational bullying involves the manipulation, or threat of manipulation, SOCIAL FACTORS ON ATTITUDES 3 to victims’ social relationships with the intent to damage their reputations or social connections (Crick et al., 2001). In the past couple of decades, researchers have also suggested that bullying can be categorized according to whether it occurs on or offline. Some researchers have argued that cyberbullying is like any other form of bullying in that it involves negative and repetitive actions intended to harm the victim, but that it is unique in that it uses technology to commit these acts of aggression (Nocentini et al., 2010). At the same time, other researchers have proposed that cyberbullying is quite different from traditional conceptualizations of bullying. For example, Li and colleagues (2012) proposed several additional characteristics of cyberbullying that set it apart, including that cyberbullying requires knowledge of technology, can be done anonymously, can reach a wider audience, is mainly an indirect incident for participants, and may be harder for victims to escape from. Importantly, the researchers added that cyberbullying can create permanent products (e.g., images, videos, and email chains) that repeatedly harm the victims without the bullies having to engage in repetitive aggressive acts themselves.