Individual risk factors for school bullying

Published date29 January 2010
Pages4-16
Date29 January 2010
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.5042/jacpr.2010.0001
AuthorDavid Farrington,Anna Baldry
Subject MatterHealth & social care,Sociology
*OURNALOF!GGRESSION#ONFLICTAND0EACE2ESEARCHs6OLUME)SSUEs*ANUARY¥0IER0ROFESSIONAL,TD4
10.5042/jacpr.2010.0001
Scope
Historically, most research on school violence
(certainly outside the United States) has been
concerned with bullying. Most researchers
agree that bullying consists of physical, verbal,
or psychological attack or intimidation that
is intended to cause fear, distress or harm to
the victim, and that it involves repeated acts
over time (Farrington, 1993; Olweus, 1993).
Bullying includes not only physical violence and
verbal threats but also name-calling, spreading
rumours, and social isolation (Bjorkvist et
al, 1992). Violence is defined as behaviour
intended to cause injury, but it also includes
threats. Hence, bullying includes acts that
would probably not be termed school violence.
While American researchers have been more
interested in school violence (Astor et al, 1999),
researchers in the rest of the world have been
more interested in bullying (Smith et al, 1999b).
This article is concerned with individual risk
factors for school bullying. There is a great deal
of research on individual risk factors for youth
violence in general (Farrington, 1998a; 1998b;
2007). This article focuses on characteristics
of bullies, identified by self-reports (usually),
peer ratings, teacher ratings, school records
or direct observation. Individual risk factors
are defined as factors that are characteristic
of individuals, including age, gender,
aggressiveness, intelligence, impulsiveness,
personality, empathy, self-esteem and biological
factors. They can be distinguished from family,
peer, school, socio-economic, community,
or neighbourhood risk factors. We focus
particularly on individual risk factors that can
be changed, since these have most implications
for causes and prevention; we do not pay much
attention to unchangeable risk factors such as
gender and race.
More research on bullying is based on
reports by victims than on reports by bullies.
We focus on reports by bullies. Many individual
risk factors for being a victim of bullying have
been identified (see Ttofi & Farrington, 2009),
but we do not review them in this article.
In some cases, such as low self-esteem and
depression, it is unclear whether the risk factor
precedes or follows the bullying. Longitudinal
research is needed to establish this. There is
often an overlap between bullies and victims
Individual risk factors for
school bullying
David P Farrington
Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University, UK
Anna Costanza Baldry
Department of Psychology, Second University of Naples, Italy and Intervict Institute, Tilburg
University, The Netherlands
ABS TR AC T
This article reviews individual risk factors for bullying, especially gender, age, aggressiveness,
low intelligence and achievement, hyperactivity-impulsiveness, low empathy, low self-esteem,
depression, unpopularity, and physical and biological features. It also reports individual,
family and socio-economic predictors and correlates of bullying discovered in a longitudinal
survey of 411 London boys. The most important individual risk factors are low impulsiveness
and low empathy, and they could be targeted in cognitive-behavioural skills training
programmes.
KEY WORDS
Bullying; impulsiveness; empathy; achievement; unpopularity.

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT