Peer groups and children's school bullying: Scapegoating and other group processes

Abstract

Schuster's (1999) suggestion that every class might have one or two bully victims who serve as “scapegoats” for the class members was examined by Atria, Strohmeier, and Spiel (this issue) and Mahdavi and Smith (this issue), in one study and three studies, respectively. Little support was found for the scapegoating hypothesis. Whereas there was considerable diversity between classes in the number of bully victims, some classes actually revealed no bullying, hence there were no victims. However, the fact that some classes revealed bullying by some members, whereas others did not, raises the possibility that the former might still reflect the operation of group processes. Drawing on social identity development theory (SIDT; Nesdale, 2004), the potential for group-based bullying at school is briefly discussed, together with a number of factors that might contribute to its occurrence.