Ahhh let us all think back and reminisce nostalgically over our primary school days : recorder lessons (is that even a real instrument ?) ,long assemblies , teachers who rarely wore deodrant and playtime .The chances are ,that 30 percent of us do not recall these as ‘the best days of our lives’ , and the reason : bullying.
Bullying is a multifaceted universal problem which is not just restricted to human beings ,it is very much a part of the animal kingdom too.It could be argued that bullying is just a product of evolution , in that we as human beings are pack animals and in order to survive we must forge our social status and ranking amongst our peers , no one wants to be seen as the weak link ? Bullying seems to be most consistent and frequent within schools .This could be for a number of reasons, Sentse et al ( 2007 )conducted a study into group dissimilarity in involvement in bullying. The study highlighted that the environment within the classroom was very representative of the degree to which bullying occurred .The study had a vast sample and used 2,578 participants ,both female and male from 109 middle schools .Multi-level analysis was used on the data from the examination of group and individual effects , the study found that there is a very strong possitive correlation between pro social behaviors and the degree of peer acceptance , this of course makes sense and is what you expect to find .However controversially, the study also concluded that anti social class room behavior such as aggression can rate favorably with peers ,and these children are often referred to by others as their ‘best friend’ .Despite this though ,if a child shows anti social behaviors and is with drawn then others do not rate them highly on peer preference scales .Sense et al concluded that classroom norms are the biggest factor in predicting the volume of bullying which occurs .Where bullying is the social norm the perpetrayers are favoured by their peers however in classrooms where bullying is not socially normative the bullies are viewed unfavorably by their peers .
So if a child is unfortunate enough to be the target of bullying in school what effect can this have on their development ? Coie and Dodge (1983 ) researched this area and found that peer rejection in childhood is a significant predictor of later social maladjustment.Longitundinal and self report methods were used to obtain this data , this methodolgy is very popular when researching child devolpment .Longitundinal studies are broken down into either follow forward or follow bacward design .The follow bacwards catergory can be very unrealiable and misleading because it involves using participants who have shown maladjustment in adulthood and the researcher trys to work back through their lives in an effort to pinpoint a common denominator which could have been the reason for the onset of this maladjustment .However there are just as many problems with the follow forward method in longitundinal design where participants are monitored as they mature, problems with colecting data occur when participants drop out or move away.Unfortunatly nothing can be done about this and it wastes alot of time and efforts ,the studies are also very expensive just because of the ammount of time they take to run and and also demand a high level of commitment from everyone involved.
The ethics of this kind of research could also be questioned , within the sentse et al study part of the data was gained by asking the school children who they lease liked out of their class ,arguably this is encouraging the alientation of these pupils ,creating an enviroment whereby the children feel that disengaging and alienating other children is exceptable.What makes it worse is that this could be very damaging to all of the participants social devolopment .Another issue with research in this topic is defining terms ,what constitues bullying? The experiment Sentse et al conducted did not use opertaional definitions of what behaviours they were assessing . As this researh had no operational definitions , the validity of research must be questioned along with other studies like it ,as what one experimentor may class as banter another may catergorise as bullying.
The evidence that being a victim of bullying as a child has multiple effects on development is loud ,which is why more research really should be conducted into why children bully so that strong interventions can be implemented which (without wanting to sound reductionist or to over simplify the maturation process of children) ,could mean that individuals avoid certain disorders in later adult life .
References
Sentse et al (2007) Person–Group Dissimilarity in Involvement in Bullying
and Its Relation with Social Status.
Parker and Asher (1987) Peer Rejection in Childhood ( Cambridge studies in social and emotional development)
estherroseburt 
There are many effects of bullying, not just for the victim. According to Smokowski and Kopasz (2005) children that bully often have psychological disorders- One study found that, among bullies, nearly one third had attention-deficit disorder, 12.5 per cent had depression, and 12.5 percent had oppositional conduct disorder (Kumpulainen, Rasanen, &Puura,2001) however this study should not be used to assume children with these disorders are always going to be bullies, such generalizations would cause problems. Bullies are also likely to have personality defects such as a positive attitude towards aggression. Other associated long term effects include excessive drinking, criminal convictions and substance abuse as adults. Whilst this study shows the correlates of bullying you cannot really call them “effects” as these are things that are caused by other problems not because you bullied someone when you were ten!
Victims have been found to suffer from lower self esteem, higher emotional loneliness and more difficulty in maintaining friendships than non victims. (Schäfer et al, 2004)
Kumpulainen, K., Rasanen, E., & Puura, K. (2001).Psychiatric disorders and the use of mental health services among children involved in bullying. Aggressive Behavior, 27, 102–110
Schäfer, M., Korn, S., Smith, P. K., Hunter, S. C., Mora-Merchán, J. A., Singer, M. M. and Van der Meulen, K. (2004), Lonely in the crowd: Recollections of bullying. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 22: 379–394. doi: 10.1348/0261510041552756
I too was intrigued to find out why children bully others after reading this blog. I have always heard that it is because the bullies themselves have been mistreated by others, for example relatives, but a study with 400 Australian students (Rigby, 2005) suggests some alternative reasons. Rigby found that the engagement of bullying behaviour was strongly related to the attitude toward the victim and perceived expectancies of friends. This attitude can be formed as a result of a number of different life experiences not just from feeling victimised themselves, therefore it is not only hard, but also unreliable to try and find the true source of the problem. However, the school environment is one in which young children spend a lot of time and as mentioned in your blog, when the children are familiar with bullying they accept the bully which would also suggest a decrease in empathy for the victim. This is therefore where a change in attitude can be implemented: through teachers in a school environment.
On the other hand Rigby found that the reason for reporting a case of bullying came from an expectancy from parents and not teachers which highlights parental influence on reducing bullying within our schools.
jemaher-
After one of my SONA studies the other day, I got talking to the researcher afterwards. She explained to me that there has been research strongly suggesting that a feeling of social rejection in children can increase the likelehood of bullying. It is thought that this is because of the social cues which a ‘rejected’ child gives off. This can go some way towards explaining the pheonema that children who move schools due to bullying are again victimised in the new school.
I would therefore agree with you that it is not perhaps only the nature of the bully which can explain bullying behaviour, but also that of the victim; due to factors such as social expectancies.
I believe that bullying can have an affect on emotional development because people who have been bullied believe that they are weak and worthless and that they deserve to be bullied and they just accept it and let it happened and do not do anything about so the bullying continues and then when they get older that is all they are use to and they do not know how to act differently and how to get out of it. They continue to let people bully them and do not know that they deserve better and that they could have a better life and do not understand it when people do treat them differently. They may even continue their lives with an abusive partner as this is what they are use to and they do not think anything of it and continue their lives this way.