Isabel Cuadrado-Gordillo 1889.full

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Violence
Journal of Interpersonal
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DOI: 10.1177/0886260511431436
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2012 27: 1889 originally published online 26 December J Interpers Violence
Isabel Cuadrado-Gordillo
Analysis
Conform to Teenagers' Perception of Bullying? A Role-Based
Repetition, Power Imbalance, and Intentionality: Do These Criteria
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Journal of Interpersonal Violence
27(10) 1889 1910
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DOI: 10.1177/0886260511431436
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1
University of Extremadura, Badajoz, Spain
Corresponding Author:
Isabel Cuadrado-Gordillo, University of Extremadura (Spain), Faculty of Education, Avd Elvas
s/n, 06006Badajoz, Spain
Email: cuadrado@unex.es
Repetition, Power
Imbalance, and
Intentionality: Do These
Criteria Conform to
Teenagers Perception of
Bullying? A Role-Based
Analysis
Isabel Cuadrado-Gordillo
1
Abstract
The criteria that researchers use to classify aggressive behaviour as bullying
are repetition, power imbalance, and intent to hurt. However, studies that have
analyzed adolescents perceptions of bullying find that most adolescents do
not simultaneously consider these three criteria. This paper examines adoles-
cents perceptions of bullying and of the different forms it takes, and whether
these perceptions vary according to the teens role of victim, aggressor, or
witness in a bullying situation. The data acquisition instrument was a question-
naire applied to a sample of 2295 teenagers. The results show that none of
these three groups considered the criterion of repetition to be important to
define bullying. A further conclusion was that both aggressors and witnesses
used the criteria of power imbalance and intent to hurt to identify a situation of
bullying, although the aggressors placed especial emphasis on the superiority
of power over the victim, while the witnesses emphasized the intent to hurt
the victim. One noteworthy finding was that victims do not consider the
factor power imbalance. The factor that determined their perceptions was
the intent to hurt. Finally, some modes of bullying were seen as forms of typi-
cal teen social interactions, and the perception depended significantly on the
adolescents role as aggressor, victim, or witness.
Article
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1890 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 27(10)
Keywords
bullying, mental health and violence, treatment/intervention, youth violence
Despite the more than 30 years of research on bullying, the field has yet to
reach unanimous agreement on its definition. The principal achievement
would seem to be general agreement on three criteria that distinguish bullying
from aggressive behavior. These criteria may be summarized as follows:
power imbalance in favor of the aggressor, with the victim of bullying find-
ing him- or herself in an inferior status that makes it very difficult to put up
any defense (Schwartz, Gorman, Nakamato, & McKay, 2006), intent to cause
another person physical, social, or psychological harm (Erling & Hwang,
2004; Olweus, 1993), and repetition of aggressive behavior (Arora, 1996).
With respect to the modes of bullying, these comprise direct physical
abuse (hitting, pushing, insulting) and indirect aggression related to social
exclusion (shunning a person, spreading false rumors about someone;
Solberg & Olweus, 2003).
Pupils Perceptions of Bullying
Studies that have analyzed the perceptions of the concept that pupils give
find that a major proportion of teenagers do not simultaneously apply the
criteria of intent to hurt, repetition, and power imbalance (Frisn, Holmqvist,
& Oscarsson, 2008; Guerin & Hannessey, 2002; Madsen, 1996; Naylor,
Cowie, Cossins, Bettencourt, & Lemme, 2006; Vaillancourt et al., 2008).
In relation to the criterion of repetition, the work of Madsen (1996) found
that only 3% of teenagers allude to the criterion of repetition. The work of
Naylor et al. (2006), in which there participated a sample of teenagers aged
11 to 14 years (n = 1,820), raised this proportion to 9%. Vaillancourt et al.
(2008) reported similar results in analyzing the differences between the defi-
nition given by researchers on bullying and the definitions of 1,767 Canadian
teens of from 8 to 18 years old. Only 6% of the boys and girls mentioned the
repetition criterion, with this percentage being lower in the 8-year-olds (4%)
than in the 18-year-olds (8%). In contrast, the figure reported by Guerin &
Hannessey (2002) with teenagers aged 10 to 13 years was 27.7%.
Frisn et al. (2008) found a similar percentage in a study of the perceptions
of bullying of 877 Swedish 13-year-olds, with 30% of the participants refer-
ring to the criterion of repetition.
With respect to the notion of the intent to hurt others, Everett & Price
(1995) on teenagers perceptions of the causes of school violence find that
Cuadrado-Gordillo 1891
only 17% of the 726 adolescents surveyed perceive the intention to hurt in
the aggressor. Other studies found the proportion of teenagers who apply the
criterion of intent to hurt to classify aggressive behavior as bullying to be
1.7% (Vaillancourt et al., 2008), 3.9% (Naylor et al., 2006), 5% (Madsen,
1996), or 13% (Guerin & Hennessey, 2002).
Finally, the criterion of power imbalance is related to coercion (Schwarzwald,
Koslowsky, & Brody-Shamir, 2006) and to the perceived legitimacy of the
abuse of power (Raven, 1992). In the school context, the transition from one
educational stage to another is one of the moments where power imbalance
among peers is especially noticeable and legitimized (Pellegrini & Long, 2002;
Schwartz et al., 2006; Schwarzwald et al., 2006). Such teenagers do not define
these aggressions as bullying, probably because they perceive them as transi-
tory, that is, these situations will tend to disappear as the school course advances
and they become familiar with the new context and establish relationships with
their peers (Quinn, Bell-Ellison, Loomis, & Tucci, 2007).
In this sense, the proportion of teenagers who consider the power imbal-
ance between aggressor and victim ranges from 16% (Madsen, 1996), 19%
(Frisn et al., 2008), 26% (Vaillancourt et al., 2008), to 40% (Guerin &
Hennessey, 2002; Naylor et al., 2006).
Some studies indicate that teenagers perception of the various modes of bully-
ing is very limited, generally being restricted to physical and verbal abuse (Boulton,
Trueman, & Flemington, 2002; Quinn et al., 2007; Vaillancourt et al., 2008).
Nevertheless, the older the young, the more complex their perceptions of bullying
and the better they discriminate situations of abuse from other forms of aggression
(Menesini, Fonzi, & Smith, 2002; Smith, Cowie, lafsson, & Liefooghe, 2002;
Vaillancourt et al., 2008). We reviewed the studies analyzing the modes of bully-
ing perceived by adolescents. Boulton et al. (2002) studied 600 teenagers of 11 to
16 years old, and found that about 4 out of every 5 mention bullying situations that
involve fighting and pushing (82.9%), threats (82.9%), and forcing someone to do
things against their will (78.2%), and somewhat smaller proportions mention
giving offensive nicknames (65.9%), stealing someones personal belongings
(59.4%), spreading false rumors (54.1%), and making fun of others (41.8%). Only
20.6%, however, identified social exclusion as a manifestation of bullying.
Menesini et al. (2002) found that 97% of their teenagers included physical
abuse and 90.5% verbal types of abuse. But, unlike the aforementioned study of
Boulton et al. (2002), 95.9% and 88.6% regarded as bullying behaviors that cause
social and gender exclusion, respectively. Guerin & Hennessey (2002) describe
results that are more in line with Boulton et al.s study, with only 13% of the ado-
lescents defining social exclusion as bullying and 19% including threats.
In Naylor et al. (2006), 65% of their teenagers mentioned physical abuse, and
about 60% verbal abuse, but less than 5% referred to social exclusion. In more
recent studies, Frisn et al. (2008) reported that the teenagers of their study regarded
as bullying verbal abuse (57%), indirect aggression such as social exclusion or
spreading false rumors (40%), physical abuse (33%), and sexual harassment (25%).
The explanation of the discrepancies in these results may be the use of dif-
ferent questionnaires and the disparity of the samples, among other factors.
The Present Study
Although there has been a growth in research on adolescents perceptions of
bullying, there still remain many questions unanswered. One such question
has to do with the similarities and differences found in the perceptions of
bullying of pupils who have different roles in situations of abuse: victim,
aggressor, and witness or bystander.
According to Smith (2003), and Astor, Benbenishty, Vinokur, and Zeira
(2006), having lived through bullying situations directly or indirectly leads to
pupils who have been in schools where there were frequent aggressive situa-
tions among peers (regardless of the role they themselves played in those situ-
ations) tend to have a fuller and more consistent definition of this phenomenon
than those who went to other less conflictive schools. Those studies, however,
do not provide any data on the extent and direction of the variation in percep-
tions resulting from the adolescents experiences as victims, aggressors, or wit-
nesses of peer abuse themselves. The work of Monks & Smith (2006) addressed
this issue, analyzing in a sample of 99 children 4 to 6 years old the influence
of the role they had played in such situations on their perception of bullying.
There were no significant differences between children in involved (aggressor,
victim, or defender) or uninvolved (bystander) roles. The few differences that
were observed the authors put down to differences in age and cognitive devel-
opment. In contrast, teenagers have already formed an idea on this topic, and
it would be useful to know whether the role they played in a bullying situation
(aggressor, victim, or witnesses) affects their perception of the phenomenon. It
is precisely this question that is the focus of our inquiry.
Method
Sample
The sample consisted of 2,295 teenagers (54.3% boys and 45.7% girls; SD = .4)
aged between 12 and 16 years (M = 13.8; SD = 1.4). This sample represents
5.47% of the total number of pupils enrolled in compulsory secondary education
(CSE) of Extremadura (Spain).
To select the sample, we applied to the state schools that teach CSE a
stratified multistage, approximately proportional, sampling design, with clus-
tering and random selection of groups. The strata considered were the prov-
inces and geographical zones of the Region of Extremadura (Spain), from
which towns were selected in the north, south, west, and east of the Region,
bearing in mind the need to consider the various sociocultural contexts of the
population. The clustering used corresponded to the secondary schools them-
selves, in each of which a random selection was made of one class of each of
the 4 years of CSE (1st: ages 12-13 years; 2nd: age 14 years; 3rd: age 15 years;
and 4th: age 16 years) until the desired sample size was reached as determined
in 2,000 participants. This number was covered by a selection of 24 schools.
However, four more were added to allow for cases that may have made it
impossible to achieve the desired sample sizefor example, absence of the
How are you being treated by your peers continually since the start of
the school year? Complete all the rows and mark with a cross how you feel.
Never Sometimes Often Always
Ignoring me
Not letting me participate
Insulting me
Making fun of me or name-calling
Speaking bad about me
Hiding my things
Breaking my things
Stealing from me
Hitting me
Threatening me to scare me
Making me do things by threats
Threatening me with weapons
Harassing me sexually
pupil from school on the day the questionnaires were given, or the refusal of
pupils or their parents to agree to participate in the study. The total number of
pupils invited to participate was 2,449, and the final proportion of participa-
tion was 93.7%.
Measures
The instrument used for data acquisition was a questionnaire designed and
validated for this study. The questionnaire consisted of 30 questions. The
first three were designed to identify aggressors, victims, and witnesses,
and were taken verbatim from the questionnaire on bullying of Spains
Ombudsman and the UNICEF (Defensor del Pueblo/UNICEF, 2007), pat-
terned on the bully/victim questionnaire of Olweus (1996) and Solberg and
Olweus (2003). These items have been used in previous studies for the
identification of victims, bullies, and witnesses (Cuadrado & Fernndez,
2009; Fernndez, Cuadrado, & Cadet, 2008). An example is the following
question:
For each of these items, the adolescents have to indicate how often they
commit, suffer, or observe each type of abuse. The scale used consisted of
four values: never, sometimes, often, and always. Based on these questions,
the identification of bully, victim, or witness is made when the respondent
indicates for any of the modes of mistreatment referred to that they have
been the object of attack, that they have made such an attack, or that they
What is bullying for you?
1 2 3 4 5
Aggression by someone against a weaker person
Negative behavior intended to hurt someone else
Aggression that may be just a one-time occurrence but causes
long-lasting harm in the other person

Aggression that occurs repeatedly against someone
Making fun of someone else so as to make them feel ridiculous
Hitting someone that they have tried to make fun of before
Excluding someone from the group
A form of interacting with your friends that other people dont
understand

When someone feels attacked even though the other person had
no intention of hurting them

A form of fun typical of teenagers
have witnessed situations of mistreatment occurring continually with fre-
quency sometimes, often, or always.
The remaining 27 questions were oriented toward analyzing the teenagers
different perceptions of bullying and of the different forms in which it appears.
Each question was accompanied by different, not mutually exclusive, response
options that introduced the notions of repetition, intent to hurt, power imbal-
ance, and other notions related to revenge, forms of social relationships and
communication, and forms of amusement, among others. The response
requested from the adolescent consist of indicating their degree of agreement
with each of the options or situations presented: strongly agree (1), agree (2),
neither agree nor disagree (3), dont really agree (4), and disagree (5).
The questions in this part were grouped into four categories:
For you is it an act of bullying to continually ridicule or ignore another person?
1 2 3 4 5
No, this is normal among teens
No, it is a common way we have of relating
with each other

No, if the other person does not feel
rejected or hurt

No, if it occurs just sporadically
No, if the person who ignores me is not
someone important for me

Yes, if it hurts the other person
Yes, it is a form of revenge against others
who you dislike or have been nasty to
you

Yes, if the person who does it is somebody
popular

Questions of a definition type such as For you, what constitute
nicknames? What do you understand by insult? What does
excluding someone mean for you? An example of this type of ques-
tion would be as follows:
Questions to identify the perception of the reasons behind one or
another form of bullying (Why do you think some classmates push
or kick other children?). Within this category, there are questions
about the mode of bullying (physical, verbal, social) and about
direct and indirect forms of aggressive behavior.
Questions that examine the perception of the consequences of bul-
lying (How do you think others feel when their classmates insult
them?). Questions of this type are repeated with the other modes of
bullying analyzed.
Questions that identify the forms of bullying that adolescents con-
sider. These questions are followed by others aimed at evoking the
teens ideas about the different modes of bullying analyzed. An
example of this type of question would be as follows:
Procedure
As this was a study involving minors, it was necessary to obtain parental
consent and the approval of the Regional Administrations school inspectors
and of the management staff of the schools. To obtain the parents consent,
they were sent a letter describing the nature of the study, the use that would
be made of the data, and the researchers commitment to confidentiality and
anonymity. This letter was accompanied by an opt-out document for the
parents to send to the school if they did not want their children to participate
in the study. The school inspectors and management teams were sent a memo-
randum detailing the research objectives, the procedures to be used, and the
guarantee of ensuring the anonymity of the participants. The study hence
complied with the ethical norms governing the operation of schools.
The procedure followed to acquire the data consisted of the researchers vis-
iting each of the selected schools. The researchers themselves were respon-
sible for distributing the questionnaires in each classroom and remained there
until the questionnaires had been completed.
Data Analysis
The data were processed and analyzed using the statistical package SPSS
18.0. This analysis was split into two phases. The first consisted of a factor
analysis to reduce the number of variables for study and to determine their
relative importance, their interrelationships, and the principal factors
explaining their variability. The second phase consisted of identifying the
pupils categorized as aggressor, victim, or witness, and performing a new
exploratory factor analysis to determine whether the adolescents percep-
tions depended on the role they play in the different situations of bullying
they experience in their schools.
Results
The Adolescents Perceptions of Bullying
An exploratory factor analysis was performed on the entire data set. The
KaiserMeyerOlkin (KMO) measure of sample adequacy was 0.82, and the
Bartlett sphericity test significance level was 0.001, ensuring the suitability of
applying a factor analysis. The factors were then extracted using a principal
component analysis. The results showed three factors to explain the variability
of the adolescents responses (Table 1).
Factor 1. A form of social interaction. This factor encompasses bul-
lying situations that the teenagers interpreted as a form of amuse-
ment and peer relationships. It explained 48.68% of the variance
(Table 1), and had a moderate internal reliability ( = .61) and a
mean factor loading of 0.54.
Factor 2. Intent to hurt. This factor includes the responses in which the
teens considered the intent to cause physical, social, or psychological
harm to others as a necessary condition for aggression to be classified
as bullying. It explained 22.56% of the variance (Table 1), and had an
internal reliability of = .69 and a mean factor loading of 0.52.
Factor 3. Power imbalance. This factor includes behaviors that
the teenagers classified as bullying and in which they perceive the
aggressor to have some superiority over the victim. It explained
Table 1. Total Variance Explained by the Components
Initial Eigenvalues
Sum of the Squared Saturations of
the Extraction
Component Total
% of
Variance
Accumulated
% Total
% of
Variance
Accumulated
%
1 5.93 48.68 48.68 5.93 48.68 48.68
2 2.75 22.56 71.23 2.75 22.56 71.23
3 1.53 12.6 83.83 1.53 12.6 83.83
4 0.91 7.47 91.3
5 0.74 6.11 97.41
6 0.22 1.77 99.19
7 0.1 0.82 100
Note: Extraction method: principal component analysis.
12.6% of the variance (Table 1), and had a high internal reliability
( = .85) and a mean factor loading of 0.77.
Role Differences (Victim, Aggressor, or Witness)
in Adolescents Perceptions of Bullying
The results indicate that 18.8% of adolescents have felt mistreated by their
peers in school, independently of the intensity of the abuse they received.
This percentage includes those teens who report having been mistreated some-
times (15.8%) or very often (3%). With respect to the role of witnesses,
71.1% of adolescents stated they had witnessed situations of bullying among
peers, either sometimes (44.5%) or always (26.6%). Finally, 17.6% of
teens surveyed came into the category of aggressors, either sometimes
(15.5%) or always (2.1%).
One observes from these data that 7.5% of the sample state that they have
played more than one of the roles. To avoid contaminating the results in this
section, we decided to eliminate the data of this 7.5% of teens and consider
just those who described playing a single role. The distribution of this final
sample is presented in Table 2.
The analysis of the definitions showed that there are three common factors
regardless of the role the pupil plays: as a form of social interaction and fun,
intent to hurt, and power imbalance. The KMO sample adequacy was 0.68 for
aggressors, 0.81 for victims, and 0.77 for witnesses. The value obtained in the
Bartlett sphericity test for each of the groups was 0.001.
With respect to the aggressors perception of bullying, the results showed
the factor power imbalance to be present significantly when they define bul-
lying generically (0.801) and when they consider certain of the forms of bul-
lying: direct physical aggression (0.984), threats, both as intimidation (0.904)
and as forcing others to do things against their will (0.913), and verbal abuse,
specifically the use of negative criticism (0.481) (Table 3).
Table 2. Distribution of the Sample According to the Role Played
Gender
Boy Girl Total Mean SD
Role played Victim
Aggressor
Witness
173 183 356 178 .50
199 125 324 162 .49
758 685 1,443 721.5 .50
Total 1,130 993 2,123 1,061.5 .50
Table 3. The Aggressors Perception of Bullying. Rotated Component Matrix
Components
1 2 3
Definition of bullying .575 .801
Social isolation .464
Not letting the other participate in class .529
Insults .496 .331
Spreading false rumors .420
Nicknames .673
Negative criticisms .481
Ridiculing others .512
Hiding things .323
Stealing or breaking things .437
Direct physical aggression .626 .984
Intimidation .904
Forcing others to do things against their will .913
Note: Extraction method: principal component analysis. Rotation method: Varimax. The rota-
tion converged in 3 iterations.
Table 4. The Victims Perception of Bullying. Rotated Component Matrix
Components
1 2 3
Definition of bullying .809
Not letting the other participate in class .311 .617
Insults .579
Nicknames .481 .437
Negative criticisms .570 .333
Hiding things .442
Direct physical aggression .775 .699
Intimidation .816
Similarly, for the aggressors the factor intent to hurt is associated both
with the general definition of bullying (0.575) and the following aggressive
behaviors: insults (0.331), ridiculing others (0.512), and direct physical
aggression (0.626) (Table 8). Finally, the factor a form of social interaction
defines the following forms of aggression: social exclusion, both as isolation
(0.464) and not allowing the other to participate in class (0.529), verbal
abuse, both as spreading false rumors (0.420) and assigning nicknames
(0.673), and indirect physical aggression, whether hiding things (0.323) or
stealing or breaking things (0.437).
The above results for the victim group differ significantly from those for
the aggressor group. In this case, the factor intent to hurt had the greatest
significance, and predominated in these adolescents perceptions in both the
general definition of bullying (0.809) and in other specific forms of bullying
(Table 4).
Indeed, this group considers the behaviors associated with social isolation
(0.740), insults (0.579), ridiculing others (0.788), and stealing or breaking
personal items (0.387) to be forms of bullying primarily because they see
them as committed with intent to hurt. However, other behaviors such as not
allowing the other to participate in class, the assignment of nicknames, and
negative criticism are sometimes perceived by victims as forms of social
interaction between teens.
The victims did not mention the factor power imbalance in their definition
of bullying. Neither did they include it in the forms of aggression corresponding
to indirect physical aggression, verbal abuse, and social exclusion (Table 4).
They only allude to this factor when it comes to forms of bullying related to
direct physical aggression such as kicking or pushing (0.699), or threats as both
intimidation (0.816) and forcing others to do things against their will (0.736).
Finally, the results for the witness group showed perceptions again quite
different from those presented by the victims. Their perceptions of bullying
are closer to those of the aggressors although they differ in some respects.
Most notable is that, while they perceive bullying as abuses committed by the
aggressor with the intention of hurting someone (0.789) whom they perceive
as weaker (0.433), the two factors are not present together in any of the spe-
cific forms of bullying (Table 5).
These results take on even more relevance when one considers that several
of the forms of bullying analyzed are not perceived as aggression but rather
as behavior that promotes, facilitates, or explains teens social relationships
(Table 5). The witness group sees insults as teens own forms of interaction
and communication which at times, but not necessarily, may occur with the
intent to hurt. The factor power imbalance is associated, as for the previous
two groups, with threats and direct physical aggression.
Discussion
The results of the present study show that when we talk about bullying,
researchers and teens are thinking about quite different realities and are mak-
ing quite different basic assumptions. Very few of the respondents consider
repetition, intent to hurt, and abuse of power simultaneously as criteria to
classify aggressive behavior as bullying. Approximately 55% believe that for
a situation of aggression to be defined as bullying there must be intent to
hurt. Although this figure is much higher than those obtained in other studies
such as Guerin and Hennessey (2002), Naylor et al. (2006), or Vaillancourt
et al. (2008), it indicates that 45% of teens still think that bullying is any
behavior that hurts somebody else even though the aggressor did not mean
to do so. One can induce from these data that some adolescents might label
as bullies classmates who have inadvertently caused some harm to others. It
could therefore be a form of resolving conflicts of interest.
Only 30% of the teens perceived the bully as someone who is more power-
ful physically, psychologically, or socially, and who abuses this power in
Table 5. The Witnesses Perception of Bullying. Rotated Component Matrix
Components
1 2 3
Definition of bullying .789 .433
Not letting the other participate in class .564
Insults .398 .435
Nicknames .792
Negative criticisms .564
Hiding things .671
Direct physical aggression .674
Intimidation .737
attacks on his or her victims. This is consistent with the findings of Guerin and
Hennessey (2002), Naylor et al. (2006), and Vaillancourt et al. (2008), and
shows that most teens believe that the victims need not perceive their aggres-
sor as more powerful than they. New questions thus arise about the personal
and social characteristics that adolescents attribute to the figures of aggressor
and victim, and one might ask what is the real effectiveness of those antibullying
programs that are based on the use and management of the power struggles
and relationships among adolescents (Twemlow & Sacco, 2008).
Finally, only 3% of the teens explicitly say that there needs to be ongoing
aggression to speak of bullying. As other studies have noted (Guerin &
Hennessey, 2002; Hunter, Boyle, & Warden, 2007), teens may consider iso-
lated, one-off aggressive acts to be bullying.
These results alert one to the need to induce a change in the perceptions that
adolescents have about this phenomenona responsibility that falls largely on
adults, specifically on parents and teachers. The problem is, however, that
studies that have analyzed the perceptions that these groups of adults have of
bullying show them to be different in major respects from those of teenagers
but that it is very difficult to determine which of these two sets of perceptions
is the more accurate (Menesini et al., 2002; Smorti, Menesini, & Smith,
2003). The education that teachers receive in antibullying programs is a vari-
able that significantly influences their development of a fuller perception
more closely adapted to the reality of the process. However, other variables
such as the experiences of bullying and victimization they themselves have
lived through may condition this perception despite the specific education
and information they have received (Naylor et al., 2006).
In the case of parents, as well as such personal experiences with bullying,
other variables may be involved such as which role their children play in situ-
ations of peer violence. One might ask whether parents perception of bully-
ing varies when they are informed or they realize that their child is a bully or
a victim. Clearly studies are needed to analyze in depth which variables or
factors shape the perception of bullying and the influence that parents and
teachers can have on the genesis and evolution of teenagers perceptions of
the phenomenon.
But the implications that represent one of the main contributions of the
present work correspond to the different perceptions that teens have of bully-
ing according to whether their own role is one of aggressor, victim, or witness.
None of these three groups considered the criterion of repetition to be impor-
tant to define bullying.
Regarding the aggressors perception, it appears that the criterion to
which they attach greatest importance to define and identify a situation of
bullying is power imbalance. For these teens, being an aggressor is tanta-
mount to being powerful, and their abuse of weaker peers is a demonstra-
tion of their power to others. The need they have for social recognition
leads them to attack others to confirm and strengthen their perception of
physical or psychological superiority (Schwarzwald et al., 2006). But
besides this power imbalance criterion, aggressors simultaneously con-
sider the criterion intent to harm. It seems as if the perception that others
may have of them as powerful people were determined by the severity of
the harm they can consciously cause weaker peers. The thinking that
appears to guide their actions might be put into the following words: I
deliberately hurt others who are weaker to demonstrate how powerful I am
and to maintain my status of superiority over others. The emergence of this
type of thinking requires that intervention be focused on managing the rela-
tionships and power struggles among adolescents (Twemlow & Sacco,
2008). Furthermore, social power theory, which has been applied primarily
in organizational contexts, could be transferred to the educational context to
facilitate the identification of factors affecting the change of power in situ-
ations of violence among teens (Raven, 1992).
In the case of the witnesses, both the above criteria, imbalance and
intent, were observed to be present, but the emphasis is manifestly on the
intent to harm. Hence, witnesses may consider bullying to be any aggres-
sive behavior in which they perceive a purpose of hurting others. The fear
they feel of themselves being harmed causes them to react by staying out of
situations of violence that they observe (Gini, Pozzoli, Borghi, & Franzoni,
2008). Their thinking seems to be as follows:
There are classmates who enjoy hurting others, or who do so to prove
they are more powerful than others. If I intervene to stop it, I may be
the one who ends up harmed, so I do not get involved.
Or else,
I have to hide my weaknesses and keep as low a profile as possible so
that the bullies do not pay any attention to me and attack me. So when
they are bullying others, it is best not to intervene.
The prevention of bullying will require this passive attitude and behavior
of the witnessing students to be abandoned and replaced by a willingness to
report occurrences of bullying and put a stop to them as far as possible. To
this end, intervention is needed to deal with this fear of harm that witnesses
feel with the application of programs to improve cognitive empathy that pro-
mote awareness of the pain that the victims suffer and to foster the learning
of the social skills that will allow them to assertively confront aggressors
(Cuadrado, 2010).
With respect to the victims perception of bullying, the variable that sum-
marizes almost the entirety of their perceptions is intent to hurt. Doubtless,
their own experience of aggression, and the physical, psychological, or social
pain it caused them to a good part determined this result. One noteworthy
finding was that victims do not consider the factor power imbalance. This
may be due either to their internalization of an acceptance that they are rela-
tively defenseless, with less power than their peers, or to problems of psycho-
social adjustment that they present, and which lead them to legitimate and
rationalize the aggression they receive, and find justification for the behavior
of the aggressors without the need to attribute any superiority to them (Chan,
2009; Felix, Furlong, & Austin, 2009; Frisen, Johnson, & Persson, 2007). For
example, teenagers with poor self-esteem and a maladapted image of them-
selves may think that it is normal for others to abuse them because they are
not as attractive, outgoing, or fun to be with as their peers. The results show
that victims do not perceive bullying attacks as chance events but as having a
clear intention to cause harm. This could explain why some victims think that
a peer who attacks them does so deliberately so that they will realize how
ugly, timid, or boring they are. Faced with this kind of situation and percep-
tion, priority needs to be given to intervention directed toward improving
victims self-image and self-esteem, and toward developing an autonomous
morality (Ttofi & Farrington, 2009).
But while it is important to know what pupils understand by bullying, it is
equally interesting to know which behaviors they classify as such, and whether
these correspond to the forms of bullying analyzed in epidemiological studies
and in studies designed to detect peer abuse. In this sense, our results point to
the presence of a new factor, which we have denoted a form of social interac-
tion, which explains the use of certain antisocial behaviors.
The results showed aggressors to have very simplifying (distorted) forms
of thinking, with disintegrative emotions (anger, imitation, etc.) that lead
them to believe that their aggressive behaviors are normal ways to resolve
transient problems with no further repercussions. This belief is especially
marked in modes of bullying related to social exclusion, verbal abuse, and
indirect physical aggression (7 of the 12 modes analyzed score on the factor
forms of relating socially). Such adoption of antisocial behavior to interact
with others denotes a lack of social skills, the assumption of relatively unas-
sertive models of getting on together with others probably inherited from
their family background or from the peer group from which they hope to get
some type of recognition or acceptance, and, as indicated by Menesini et al.
(2003), an imbalance in their moral development that makes it hard for them
to understand the seriousness of their actions and the harm they cause to oth-
ers. In this sense, one needs to know whether the use of and exposure to these
behaviors throughout adolescence and perhaps during childhood leads to
their internalization, with the result that, once past this developmental stage,
young people will continue using these behaviors to interact with others
(Huesmann, Dubow, & Boxer, 2009).
However, the aggressors perception of violent behavior depends on the
mode in which this behavior is manifest. When it is the form of threats, the
aggressors tend to perceive it as a sign of dominance and power over others
(only the strongest can threaten others; if I intimidate the weak, I prove how
powerful I am). In the case of direct physical aggression, the aggressors
perception combines two criteria: imbalance and intentionality. It seems
as if physical attacks are used as a dominance display mechanism in which
power is measured according to the harm caused to others.
Other modes of behavior, such as ridiculing peers, are exclusively inter-
preted as only being possible for those who are powerful to remind the weak
of this superiority and also that this superiority gives them the right to mock
others. This variability in perceptions highlights the need to implement dif-
ferentiated programs and measures of intervention based on the forms of
aggressive behavior that occur in school.
With respect to the victims perceptions of the various forms of bullying, for
8 of the 12 of these forms analyzed, this group believes that there exists a mani-
fest intent to hurt others. Doubtless, their experiences of victimization and the
hurt they have been subjected to would largely explain the scores for this factor.
Nonetheless, some of these modes, mainly verbal aggression, also interact with
the factor forms of relating socially. One possible reason for the existence of
this duality could be the influence of the social context on the perception of
aggression (Lawrence & Green, 2005), with the adolescent perceiving aggres-
sive behaviors either as a standardized pattern or as an effort to hurt others
depending on his or her current social context and the people he or she is inter-
acting with. For example, nicknames are seen both as a harmless mechanism of
peer interaction, and as behavior that is intended to hurt the recipient. Whether
one or the other perception arises is probably conditioned by the person who
uses the nickname, or by the peers who are present when it is used, to mention
just two possible situations. These results provide a warning that programs of
prevention and intervention against bullying cannot be restricted to the purely
personal plane but must be extended to cover a study of the contexts of the
school, the family, and the social environment that is closest to these adoles-
cents, and how they themselves perceive these contexts (Snyder, Horsch, &
Childs, 1997). Victims have no such duality of perception of other forms of
bullying such as social exclusion, however. They are convinced that the pur-
pose behind this type of behavior is indeed to hurt and that there is nothing
harmless about it. Their perception might be put into words as follows: They
isolate me because they do not like me, and that is how they show me. In the
case of threats, the perception of power imbalance is foremost (Those who
intimidate me are stronger than me, and they do it to prove to me that I am
weak), while in direct physical aggression there coexist the two criteria of
intentionality and imbalance (They hit me because they do not like me
and that is how they show others how little I am worth, and how weak I am).
These results indicate that the experiences of being bullied will determine the
specific type of action that will need to be carried out with each of the victims.
One also concludes that the measures to implement must be based on a prior
analysis of the processes of bullying, attribution styles, and decision making.
Finally, the study of the witnesses perceptions showed most of the forms
of bullying involving social, verbal, and indirect physical abuse to be per-
ceived as behaviors that teens use to interact with their peers and that are not
aimed at hurting anybody. These data suggest that teens may be adopting
patterns of behavior and social interaction that involve a high risk to their
personal, moral, and social development.
In contrast, threats and direct physical attacks are interpreted as behavior
that occurs to display the power they some of their classmates have.
The lack of personal experiences of bullying, of the capacity for empathy,
and of self-confidence, together with the fear of becoming victims them-
selves, are the possible causes for witnesses not classifying any of the violent
forms of behavior analyzed as manifestations of bullying. In this sense, one
can say that the passive attitude of witnesses indirectly enhances both the
actions of the bully and the feeling of helplessness of the victims.
Pragmatic view of the study
The present results are directed toward improving programs for intervention
and prevention of violent behavior. In this sense, it must be noted that these
programs need to place particular emphasis on modifying the participants
maladjusted perceptions concerning interpersonal relationships, on interven-
ing in attributional styles, and on developing awareness of the potential
consequences of their actions for people who do not share their ways of
relating with others (Eron et al., 2002). In light of the results of the study, our
proposal focuses on the importance of considering cognitive and emotional
mediation of the subject in whichever of the roles. This would allow direct
intervention on the victims internalization of the bullying, on the aggressors
distorted thinking and moral imbalance, and on the witnesss difficulty in
overcoming the fear of exclusion. For the optimization of this prevention and
intervention, it would be advisable to consider involving those members of
the community who are most significant for the adolescent (family, friends,
school, etc.) since the behavior of these young people extends across all their
social environments.
Suggestions for Further Work in the Field
The results generate new questions that could guide future work focused on
the study of adolescents perceptions about bullying. One of these questions
relates to the variability that may be found in the perception of bullying
according to the type of abuse committed, suffered, or observed and to its
intensity: Do past or present victims of social exclusion have the same per-
ception of bullying as those who have been the target of ridicule and insults?
This type of question is of course extensible to the other modes and manifes-
tations of bullying. Also with respect to the victims, it would be interesting
to know whether those who have received assistance to overcome these situ-
ations have a different perception of bullying from those who have never
faced this problem.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publica-
tion of this article.
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Bio
Isabel Cuadrado-Gordillo is PhD in Psychology and Professor at the University of
Extremadura (Spain). Coordinator of the Educational Innovation and Research Group
(GRIE) of the University of Extremadura. Member of the Regional Observatory on
School Sociability.

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