Attributions about Peer Victimization in US and Korean Adolescents and Associations with Internalizing Problems

Although there is cultural variability in how individuals make attributions for their own and others’ behaviors, cultural variation in youth’s attributions about peer victimization and their relation with internalizing problems has gone unexamined. To address this issue, adolescents from the U.S. (...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of youth and adolescence 2022-10, Vol.51 (10), p.2018-2032
Main Authors: Yang, Joo Young, McDonald, Kristina L., Seo, Sunmi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescents
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Child and School Psychology
Clinical Psychology
Cultural Differences
Empirical Research
Health Psychology
History of Psychology
Law and Psychology
Mental depression
Psychology
Social anxiety
Teenagers
Victimization
Youth
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Summary:Although there is cultural variability in how individuals make attributions for their own and others’ behaviors, cultural variation in youth’s attributions about peer victimization and their relation with internalizing problems has gone unexamined. To address this issue, adolescents from the U.S. ( n  = 292, 60% female, 79.5% White, M age  = 13.6, SD  = 0.65) and Korea ( n  = 462, 50.2% female, M age  = 13.7, SD  = 0.58) reported on their peer victimization, depressive symptoms, social anxiety, self-worth, and rated their attributions to vignettes about peer victimization. Multigroup confirmatory analyses found that Korean and American youth conceptualized characterological self-blame, behavioral self-blame, and externalization of blame similarly. However, Korean youth differentially endorsed each of the three types of attributions, while U.S. adolescents endorsed characterological self-blame and behavioral self-blame at similar levels. Attributions had unique relations with internalizing problems (depression, social anxiety, global self-worth) in each culture. In multigroup SEM analyses, characterological self-blame predicted all internalizing problems for U.S. adolescents, while behavioral self-blame was not uniquely related to internalizing problems. For Korean adolescents, behavioral self-blame significantly predicted all internalizing problems, whereas characterological self-blame predicted global self-worth only. The results suggest that attributions about victimization have different adjustment implications in Korea than in the U.S.
ISSN:0047-2891
1573-6601
DOI:10.1007/s10964-022-01622-4