Peer Defending and Bullying at School: The Impact of Popularity, Resource Control Norms, and Gender

Bullying is common in Canadian schools and harmful for victimized youth. Peer defending is an effective means of dissuading bullying in schools, but students rarely intervene on behalf of others. Popular students engage in more peer defending and bullying than other students, as their social power increases their chance of success in these interactions. Whether popular students use their power to defend or bully others may be related to the norms in their school. Specifically, popular students may be more likely to defend others in the context of high prosocial control norms, and more likely to bully others in the context of high coercive control norms. In two studies, this thesis examined whether resource control norms and gender influenced the peer defending and bullying behaviours of popular youth. Study 1 used multi-level modelling to examine the influence of resource control norms on peer defending. Results indicated that popularity was positively associated with peer defending. Further, the association between popularity and peer defending decreased for girls as prosocial control norms increased, and the association between popularity and peer defending increased with coercive control norms for boys and girls. Study 2 used multi-level modeling to examine the association between resource control norms and bullying. Popularity was positively associated with bullying. The association between popularity and bullying increased for boys as coercive control norms increased, and the association between popularity and bullying decreased with prosocial control norms. Together, these findings supported the notion that resource control norms could be targeted by antibullying interventions to promote peer defending while simultaneously dissuading bullying in schools.

Department dc:contributor.department

Psychology

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Hines, Cameron T.

Advisor dc:contributor.supervisor

• Craig, Wendy

• Bullying
• Peer Defending
• Resource Control Theory
• Resource Control Norms
• Popularity
• Power
• Gender
• School
• Adolescent
• Social Norming Theory

Statement dc:rights

• Attribution 4.0 International

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1974/33190

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:queensu.scholaris.ca:1974/33190