Authors
Background
Challenging traditional views and extending evolutionary and social-cognitive perspectives, we argue that socially coercive behaviors (i.e., bullying, relational, indirect, proactive, and instrumental aggression) do not always spring from weakness but can also be strategic behaviors that serve the goal of getting ahead of others.
To this end, we propose and substantiate a Social Goals and Gains Model of Adolescent Bullying and Aggression. Specifically, we propose that adolescents are more likely to engage in bullying and aggression when they pursue agentic goals (i.e., getting ahead of others) rather than communal goals (i.e., getting along with others). Such bullying and aggression, in turn, may lead adolescents to gain popularity but lose likeability. In this article, we report a meta-analysis to test and refine our model.
Method
We systematically searched three databases (PsycInfo, ERIC, Web of Science) until June 2022, which yielded 2,718 articles. After abstract and full-text screening, the final sample included 148 independent samples, comprising a total of 164,143 adolescents aged 8 to 20 years from 23 different countries. Most of the studies were conducted in the United States (n = 44), The Netherlands (n = 33), Finland (n = 13), and China (n = 13). We extracted correlations between (a) social goals and bullying and aggression, (b) bullying, aggression, and social gains, (c) different types of social goals (communal vs. agency goals), (d) different indicators of social gains (likeability vs. popularity), and (e) social goals and social gains.
Results
We conducted a multilevel one-stage MASEM (meta-analytic structural equation modeling) with moderation analysis. Supporting the model, results showed that agentic goals had a small-to-moderate positive association with bullying and aggression which, in turn, had a small-to-moderate positive association with popularity and a small-to-moderate negative association with likeability. Contrary to what we expected, communal goals were not significantly related to bullying and aggression. All associations were consistent across adolescence. Because our main model included both bullying and aggression, we ran models separately for bullying and aggression. The direct model paths did not differ significantly between the bullying and aggression model, and the paths in these models did not differ significantly from the paths in the main model.
Conclusion
Together, the results provide converging evidence for The Social Goals and Gains Model of Adolescent Bullying and Aggression. This model suggests that bullying and aggression can be seen as self-regulatory and socially skilled behaviors that are driven, in part, by agentic goals and relate to gains in popularity—at the loss of likeability. Future programs aiming to decrease bullying and aggression might benefit from targeting adolescents’ goals, helping them fulfill their agentic goals in prosocial (rather than antisocial) ways. To make these approaches optimally effective, it will be critical to address group norms that reward adolescent bullying and aggression with popularity.
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