Moral Disengagement and School Bullying Perpetration in Middle Childhood: A Short-Term Longitudinal Study in Sweden

ABSTRACT

The aim of the current study was to longitudinally investigate the bi-directional relationship between moral disengagement and bullying perpetration in a sample of 1,354 students from 108 elementary classes in 69 public schools. Students participated in the study both at Time 1 (fourth grade) and around one year later at Time 2 (fifth grade). Structural equation model analyses showed that bullying perpetration at Time 1 predicted moral disengagement at Time 2, when controlling for moral disengagement stability over time. In addition, we found that moral disengagement at Time 1 also predicted bullying perpetration at Time 2, when controlling for bullying perpetration at Time 1. These findings suggest that teachers, school staff, and professionals should consider interventions that address moral disengagement when working with children involved in bullying.

KEYWORDS:

• Bullying
• perpetration
• children
• middle childhood
• moral disengagement

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a grant awarded to Robert Thornberg from Vetenskapsrådet (The Swedish Research Council) [grant number D0775301].

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Vetenskapsrådet [D0775301].

Notes on contributors

Robert Thornberg

Robert Thornberg, Ph.D., is Professor of Education in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Learning at Linköping University in Sweden. His main research interests focus on social and moral processes associated with school bullying and various bystander behaviors in bullying and peer victimization.

Linda Wänström

Linda Wänström, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the Division of Statistics and Machine Learning at Linköping University in Sweden. She has a background in statistics and quantitative psychology, and her research focus is both on statistical models and on psychological applications. Her area of interest are intelligence and statistical models for intellectual development, bullying, optimal design of experiments, and selection bias in observational studies.

Tiziana Pozzoli

Tiziana Pozzoli, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, University of Padova, Italy. Her research interests concern individual and contextual variables associated with different behavior during bullying episodes, focusing especially on bystanders' behavior.

Jun Sung Hong

Jun Sung Hong, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at Wayne State University and an Adjunct Assistant Professor (summer) in the Department of Social Welfare at Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea. His research focuses on school bullying, youth violence, juvenile delinquency, and adolescent mental health.