Good and evil at school: Bullying and moral evaluation in early adolescence

We investigated how adolescents (sixth-graders, N = 357) morally evaluated hypothetical bullying and defending protagonists and whether these evaluations related to behavior in bullying as nominated by peers. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) resulted in four factors for the evaluation of the hypoth...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of moral education 2014-01, Vol.43 (1), p.18-31
Main Authors: Kollerova, Lenka, Janosova, Pavlina, Rican, Pavel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescents
Aggression
aggressive behavior
Antisocial Behavior
Bullying
Contempt
Correlation
Czech Republic
Deviance
Early Adolescents
Elementary school students
Empathy
Exploratory factor analysis
Factor Analysis
Foreign Countries
Grade 6
Hypotheses
Justice
Moral aspects
moral cognition
moral motivation
Moral Values
Morality
Multivariate Analysis
Prosocial Behavior
Student Attitudes
Student Characteristics
Teenagers
Variance analysis
Victims
Vignettes
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Summary:We investigated how adolescents (sixth-graders, N = 357) morally evaluated hypothetical bullying and defending protagonists and whether these evaluations related to behavior in bullying as nominated by peers. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) resulted in four factors for the evaluation of the hypothetical bullies: Evil soul, Contempt, Cowardice, and Deviance, and five factors for the evaluation of the hypothetical defender: General admiration, Courage, Cool, Empathic care, and Fair justice. Corresponding scales were constructed. The findings showed that bullying positively correlated with evaluating the hypothetical bullies using Cowardice while victimization positively correlated with evaluating the hypothetical defender in terms of General admiration, Empathic care, and Fair justice. MANOVA for each of the two sets of the evaluative scales indicated that behavioral status (bully, victim, defender, or uninvolved) had a significant effect on the moral evaluation of hypothetical bullies, and no significant effect on the moral evaluation of the hypothetical defender.
ISSN:0305-7240
1465-3877
DOI:10.1080/03057240.2013.866940