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Adolescent bullying and personality: An adaptive approach
Personality and Individual Differences 52 (2012) 218–223
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Adolescent bullying and personality: An adaptive approach Angela S. Book a, Anthony A. Volk b,⇑, Ashley Hosker a a b
Department of Psychology, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada L2S 3A1 Department of Child and Youth Studies, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada L2S 3A1
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 8 July 2011 Received in revised form 16 October 2011 Accepted 20 October 2011 Available online 10 November 2011 Keywords: Bullying Personality Adolescents HEXACO Evolution
a b s t r a c t From an evolutionary perspective, bullying behavior may be viewed as adaptive in nature. Moreover, as bullies may utilize both prosocial and aggressive means to achieve desired goals, they likely exhibit specific personality traits that allow for this bistrategic approach to survival. Therefore, after accounting for general aggression levels, bullying should be negatively associated with personality traits such as fairness and modesty (Honesty–Humility), but unrelated to traits such as forgiveness and tolerance (Agreeableness). Additionally, the intentional nature of the behavior suggests that bullying should be positively associated with instrumental, but not reactive, aggression. A sample of 310 adolescents completed measures of bullying, personality, and instrumental/reactive aggression. Results supported the hypotheses and are interpreted from an adaptive perspective. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Bullying behavior is defined as an imbalance of power between two individuals, where the stronger individual repeatedly causes harm to the weaker individual (Olweus, 1993). Adolescent bullying is a significant international problem (Pepler & Craig, 2008) with as many as 100–600 million adolescents directly involved with bullying worldwide, each year (Volk, Craig, Boyce, & King, 2006). Moreover, bullying has been document by anthropologists studying modern hunter-gatherers (e.g., Briggs, 1970; Turnbull, 1972) as well as historians documenting past cultures (Cunningham, 2005; Hsiung, 2005). Given its tremendous ubiquity across different times, cultures, and geographies, some researchers have suggested that bullying may be (in part) an evolved adaptation (Kolbert & Crothers, 2003; Volk, Camilleri, Dane, & Marini, in press). 1.1. Bullying as an adaptation The idea that bullying is, at least in part, the result of an evolved adaptation is supported by evidence beyond its ubiquity. Bullying is widespread amongst social animals ranging from fish (Alcock, 1988) to chickens (Masure & Allee, 1934) to chimpanzees (Goodall, 1986) where it is adaptive because it promotes access to physical, social, and/or sexual resources. Contrary to popular stereotypes, and unlike victims (Hawker & Boulton, 2000) or bully-victims (Mynard & Joseph, 1997), adolescent bullies do not appear to suffer many adverse effects from bullying beyond a heightened propensity to ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 905 688 5550; fax: +1 905 641 2509. E-mail address: [email protected] (A.A. Volk). 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.10.028
engage in antisocial behaviors (Berger, 2007). In fact, bullies appear to be better off than average adolescents with regard to mental health (Ireland, 2005; Juvonen, Graham, & Schuster, 2003; Volk et al., 2006), physical health (Wolke, Woods, Bloomfield, & Karstadt, 2001), popularity (de Bruyn, Cillessen, & Wissink, 2010; Juvonen et al., 2003), and social skills, including theory of mind, cognitive empathy, leadership, social competence, and self-efficacy (Caravita, Di Blasio, & Salmivalli, 2009; Sutton, Smith, & Swettenham, 1999; Vaillancourt, Hymel, & McDougall, 2003). As in other animals, bullying appears to be sexually adaptive as bullies start dating at a younger age, are more active with members of the opposite sex, report greater dating/mating opportunities, and are more likely to be in a dating relationship (Connolly, Pepler, Craig, & Taradash, 2000). Furthermore, in situations of scarce resources, bullying may also be adaptive by increasing physical resources (Turnbull, 1972). Taken together, these data suggest that bullying is a plausible adaptation in human adolescents (Volk et al., in press). A necessary, but not sufficient, condition for an adaptation is that it is linked to genes. In a cohort of over 1000 10 year-old twins genetic differences accounted for 61% of the variation in bullying (Ball et al., 2008). While it has yet to be determined exactly which genes are involved in bullying, one promising category of genes that influence bullying are those associated with personality (Volk et al., in press). A number of studies have shown that many aspects of personality have linkages with specific genes (e.g., DRD4 and aggression, Schmidt, Fox, Rubin, Hu, & Hamer, 2002; DRD4 and extraversion or 5-HTTPLR and neuroticism, Ebstein, 2006). These genes, and likely numerous others that have not been described, are plausible candidates for bullying given the significant connection between bullying and personality (Bouchard & Loehlin, 2001;
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Eysenck, 2006). This makes a study of personality and bullying highly relevant from an adaptive perspective. 1.2. Bullying and personality Over the last two decades bullying, as a general field, has attracted a significant amount of research attention (Berger, 2007). However, relatively little research has directly studied the link between personality and bullying. Olweus (1993) outlined the typical personality of bullies as being tolerant of violence, impulsive, and un empathic. Studies using the Eysenck Personality Inventory-Junior reported heightened levels of psychoticism and modest increases in extraversion and neuroticism amongst bullies (Connolly & O’Moore, 2003; Mynard & Joseph, 1997; Slee & Rigby, 1993). Italian studies of bullying and Big Five personality revealed that children who bullied tended to show a similar pattern of low Friendliness (Agreeableness) and higher Emotional Instability (Neuroticism; Menesini, Camodeca, & Nocentini, 2010; Tani, Greenman, Schneider, & Fregoso, 2003). A study amongst American children again found a negative correlation with Agreeableness, but no relationship with Neuroticism and a significant negative relationship with Conscientiousness (Bollmer, Harris, & Milich, 2006). Scholte and colleagues (2005) found that Undercontrollers (moderate to high scores on extraversion, low scores on Agreeableness and Conscientiousness) were more likely to bully other children. Bullying has also been linked to moderately higher levels of callous-unemotional (CU) traits that include lack of guilt, lack of empathy, poor affect, and use of another for personal gain (Barry et al., 2000; Viding, Simmonds, Petrides, & Frederickson, 2009). Thus the findings for bullying and personality are few, scattered in their measures, and largely atheoretical. We therefore propose studying personality and bullying using an adaptive theoretical viewpoint to explicitly shed light on why certain personality factors, and not others, are related to bullying. Ideally, this would involve using a personality scale that has an explicitly adaptive theoretical underpinning. As such, we chose to use the HEXACO (Ashton & Lee, 2007) to study the relationship between bullying and personality. 1.3. Current study The HEXACO is an evolutionarily-informed model of personality that extends the Big Five model of personality by adding a sixth factor: Honesty–Humility (Ashton & Lee, 2007). The HEXACO model includes Honesty–Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience (Ashton & Lee, 2001). Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness are very similar to the standard Big Five representations of these traits (Ashton & Lee, 2001; Digman, 1990). The additional factor of Honesty–Humility is characterized by truthfulness, fairness, sincerity, modesty, and lack of greed. Agreeableness is characterized by tolerance, forgiveness, and low aggression; note that the low pole of HEXACO Agreeableness includes anger-related traits that are associated with Big Five Neuroticism. Emotionality includes traits typically associated with Neuroticism in the Big Five model, such as anxiety, fearfulness, and emotional reactivity, but also adds sentimentality and dependence. With regards to studying antisocial behaviors, the HEXACO offers a significantly better fit with the antisocial ‘‘Dark Triad’’ personality traits as compared to the Big Five (Lee & Ashton, 2005). What’s more, the HEXACO differentiates between a willingness to exploit others (Honesty– Humility) and a tolerance and forgiveness of others (Agreeableness; Ashton & Lee, 2007). This is a critical distinction that differs from the general Agreeableness factor of the Big Five as it can
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potentially differentiate adolescents who are selectively aggressive from those who are generally aggressive. A significant body of research has shown that children and adolescents who are aggressive can enjoy significant adaptive benefits if they selectively employ both aggression and prosociality to obtain their goals (Hawley, Little, & Rodkin, 2007). Hawley has labeled these children as bistrategic controllers (Hawley, 2002, 2003) as they are able to employ two different strategies, one prosocial, one aggressive, to obtain control over desired resources. In support of relating Hawley’s theory to bullying is research showing that bullies are selective in their aggression, attacking easy victims and/or those who can’t hurt the bully’s social standing (Dijkstra, Lindenberg, & Veenstra, 2008; Veenstra, Lindenberg, Munniksma, & Dijkstra, 2010). Bullies also appear to selectively employ their aggression to maintain/create strategic alliances with desired adolescents (Pellegrini & Long, 2002). The HEXACO offers the ideal measure to test whether bullies’ personalities match the pattern of bistrategic control or whether they are generally aggressive. If bullies were the latter, we expect Honesty–Humility and Agreeableness to be equally important predictors of bullying. If however, bullying was a targeted behavior, we predict that bullying would be significantly negatively related to Honesty–Humility, but contrary to studies using the Big Five, there would not be a significant relationship with Agreeableness, particularly after aggressive behaviors were controlled for. Given our belief that bullying may be adaptive, we predict that any relationship between Agreeableness and bullying will be nullified by the inclusion of measures of general aggression as this would leave Agreeableness as a measure of sociability and capacity for reactive anger that is not confounded by a bullies’ targeted aggression towards their victims. Thus we predict that only instrumental aggression will be predictive of bullying. If bullying is meant to be a deliberate, targeted attempt at gaining resources in a manner similar to bistrategic aggressive children, then instrumental, and not reactive, aggression should be the predominant predictor. 2. Method 2.1. Participants A total of 310 adolescents (121 boys, 189 girls) between the ages of 10 and 18 (M = 13.6, SD = 3.2) involved in extracurricular athletic (e.g., hockey, gymnastics) or youth clubs (e.g., church youth groups, Pathfinders/Guides) from across Southern Ontario participated in the present study. The sample was generally White (85%; 13% Asian; 2% Black) and middle-class. 2.2. Measures Participants were asked to give information on demographics (as discussed above), followed by questionnaires pertaining to social relationships in school and their primary organization or athletic group (the latter were used for a concurrent study of athletes’ personal relationships). 2.2.1. Bullying Participants filled out a bullying questionnaire (Volk & Lagzdins, 2009) asking how often in the last school term they had taken the role as a bully in terms of racial/ethnic, physical, verbal, indirect, or sexual bullying at school. For example, participants were asked questions such as, ‘‘In school, how often have you made fun of someone much weaker or less popular because of their religion or race last term?’’, with answers ranging in frequency from one (that hasn’t happened) to five (several times a week). A total score was created for bullying by totaling the values for each form of
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bullying. This bullying scale has five items with a reliability coefficient of a = .82. Further support for the cohesive structure of the bullying scale comes from a principal components analysis (unrotated). Only one eigenvalue exceeded 1.0, and the scree plot supported the one component solution. Component loadings ranged from .45 to .81 for the five items. 2.2.2. Personality Participants provided self-reports on the 100-item version of the HEXACO Personality Inventory—Revised (HEXACO-PI-R; e.g., Lee & Ashton, 2004). Each item uses a five-point response scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). The HEXACO-PI-R contains six broad factor-level scales, each of which subsumes four facet-level scales. (An additional facet scale, Altruism versus Antagonism, was designed to load on several factors). The 100 item HEXACO-PI-R was obtained from www.hexaco.org (Ashton & Lee, 2008). The reliability coefficients for the HEXACO-PI-R in this study ranged from a = .73–.78. 2.2.3. Aggression Aggression was measured using the instrumental and reactive aggression scales development by Little and colleagues (2003). Each form of aggression asked 12 questions using a four-point response scale (1 = not at all true to 4 = completely true). The reliability coefficients for instrumental aggression was a = .89 while for reactive aggression a = .92. A sample item from the proactive scale was ‘‘I often hit, kick, or punch others to get what I want’’, while a sample item from the reactive scale was ‘‘If others have angered me, I often hit, kick or punch them’’. 2.3. Procedure Local extracurricular organizations were contacted through existing connections with the researchers and through email solicitations. Adult supervisors were briefed and asked to provide written consent to approach their adolescent participants. Researchers then visited participating clubs to brief participants about the study and its methods. To reduce participant bias, participants were told it was a study of peer relationships. Participants were give two envelopes to bring home. The first envelope contained a parental letter of information and consent. The second envelope contained a participant letter of assent and the questionnaires, which they completed in private, at a time of their choosing. Both parental consent and participant assent were required. Parents were asked to not discuss the study prior to its completion to avoid biasing the adolescent’s answers. Participants were protected from any personal liability associated with their answers and participation was voluntary with no penalty for withdrawing. At a predetermined date, the participants returned their forms and received a verbal debriefing. After this debriefing, participants were asked to complete a second assent form because of the incomplete initial briefing. The participants then received $20 for their participation. These methods were approved by the Brock University Research Ethics Board. 3. Results 3.1. Descriptive data We calculated the means for age, bullying, the HEXACO, and aggression for adolescent boys and girls. A one-way ANOVA revealed that boys had significantly higher bullying and instrumental aggression scores than girls, while girls had significantly higher scores on Honesty–Humility, Emotionality, and Openness (see Table 1).
3.2. Univariate correlations Next we calculated the zero-order correlations between the variables (see Table 2). Bullying was significantly negatively correlated with Honesty–Humility, Emotionality, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness traits. Bullying was significantly positively related to both instrumental and reactive aggression. Honesty– Humility had significant negative correlations with both dimensions of aggression, while Agreeableness appeared to be more strongly correlated with reactive aggression. 3.3. Bullying hierarchical linear regression The relationships of the independent variables with bullying were analyzed using a 3-step hierarchical linear regression. The first step included age and sex, the second included the HEXACO, and the measures of aggression were entered on the third step to determine whether they altered any of the relationships between bullying and the HEXACO items. The results of the regression can be seen in Table 3. The regression model explained just over a quarter of the variance for bullying (26.0%). Being a boy and being older were both positive predictors of bullying. Honesty–Humility and Agreeableness were significant negative predictors in step two, but Honesty–Humility remained the only significant personality factor once the two measures of aggression were added. As predicted, instrumental aggression significantly predicted bullying, but reactive aggression did not (although its p = .06). 4. Discussion We examined the relationship between adolescents’ bullying and a measure of personality while controlling for general aggression. As predicted, we found significant relationships with bullying for both our personality measure of Honesty–Humility as well as the measure of instrumental aggression. Also as predicted, in the final step of the regression both Agreeableness and reactive aggression were not significant predictors of adolescent bullying. We suggest that these results are consistent with the hypothesis that bullying is adaptive. They demonstrate that bullies can engage in targeted aggression while still maintaining the capacity for supportive friendships, unlike popular stereotypes of bullies that depict them as maladaptive aggressors (e.g., Smokowski & Kopasz, 2005). 4.1. Bullying and personality At the univariate level, adolescents’ bullying was correlated with a number of personality traits. Similar to previous studies, Agreeableness, Emotionality, and Conscientiousness were all significantly negatively correlated with bullying (Bollmer et al., 2006; Tani et al., 2003). This offers confidence about the construct validity of our results as they broadly replicate what other studies have found and confirm the importance of personality traits in understanding bullying. However, our results go beyond those of previous studies. The largest personality correlate of bullying was Honesty–Humility, which fits with its hypothesized role in predicting antisocial behavior (Lee & Ashton, 2005). The importance of Honesty–Humility is reminiscent of the significant correlation between Callous-Unemotional traits and bullying (Viding et al., 2009). The predictive relationship of sex and age in our regression agree with previous literature given that boys are well known to bully more than girls on average, while bullying peaks mid-way through adolescence, so one might well expect a modest correlation with age across our sample (Volk et al., 2006). What is perhaps
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A.S. Book et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 52 (2012) 218–223 Table 1 Mean Scores and sex differences for adolescent participants (N = 310). Variable
$ Mean
$ SD
# Mesn
# SD
Age
14.45
1.84
14.05
1.47
3.78
.99
1.69
2.1
2.93
16.81**
3.41 3.49 3.52 3.04 3.27 3.18
.60 .54 .53 .51 .57 .60
3.05 2.86 3.57 3.10 3.16 2.97
.53 .49 .49 .53 .56 .53
28.10** 98.10** .75 1.12 2.68 8.14**
23.37 15.48
6.42 4.70
24.73 17.98
7.19 7.23
2.78 12.82**
Bullying Total bullying HEXACO Honesty–Humility Emotionality Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Openness Aggression Reactive Instrumental **
F(1, 289)
p < .01.
Table 2 Correlations between bullying, aggression, and personality traits in adolescents (N P 287). H Bully H E X A C O Reactive * **
.36* –
E
X
A
C
O
Reactive
Instrumental
.11* .28** –
.05 .02 .06 –
.24* .31** .04 .21** –
.18** .21** .04 .14** .20** –
.08 .21* .15** .14** .10* .25** –
.39** .43** .07 .09 .44** .25** .18** –
.40** .46** .11* .04 .27** .19** .15** .63**
p < .05. p < .01.
Table 3 Hierarchical linear regression for adolescent personality, aggression, and bullying (N = 310). Variable Step 1 Age Sex Step 2 Age Sex Honesty–Humility Emotionality Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Openness Step 3 Age Sex Honesty–Humility Emotionality Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Openness Reactive aggression Instrumental aggression * **
B
SE B
B
D r2
.107**
.107**
.214**
.046**
.260**
.107 .31 1.24
.08 .27
.23** .26**
.24 .98 .99 .17 .01 .56 .33 .07
.08 .30 .24 .24 .25 .26 .23 .23
.18** .21** .25** .05 .00 .12* .08 .02
.19 .86 .60 .13 .01 .29 .23 .14 .05 .06
.07 .30 .25 .23 .24 .27 .22 .22 .03 .03
.14** .18** .16** .03 .00 .07 .06 .04 .14 .16*
Model r2 **
p < .05. p < .01.
most encouraging is that we were able to obtain a large effect, explaining a quarter of the variance in adolescents’ bullying using a simple regression model based on age, sex, a measure of personality, and two complimentary measures of aggression. This highlights the potential utility of personality traits in predicting
bullying amongst adolescents. Our multivariate results confirmed our hypothesis that the most critical multivariate predictor is not Agreeableness, but Honesty–Humility. They also emphasize the unique advantage of using the HEXACO as opposed to the Big Five model, as Honesty–Humility predicted bullying above and beyond Agreeableness. Agreeableness was a significant univariate predictor but it was no longer a significant predictor when measures of general aggression were entered. Rather, its correlations show it to be a better predictor of anger/reactive aggression than planned proactive aggression. When one considers the personality of aggressive individuals, a measure of aggression (like the Big Five or HEXACO Agreeableness) is almost certainly going to be confounded with general aggression. In other words, it is no surprise that aggressive bullies show aggressive personality traits. What is perhaps surprising is that when aggressive behavior is controlled for, bullies appear to be as agreeable as other adolescents and that agreeableness is more strongly related to reactive rather than proactive aggression. This is crucially important as it could allow bullies to maintain adaptive close relationships with their allies while at the same time using aggression to adaptively target victims in order to gain control over the physical or social resources they desire. The selective nature of bullies’ aggression is reinforced by our findings that instrumental aggression was a significant multivariate predictor of bullying while reactive aggression was not. Despite a trend towards reactive aggression being a significant predictor, it nevertheless appeared to be a weaker multivariate predictor than instrumental aggression. Indeed, the two significant (non-demographic) predictors in our final regression, Honesty–Humility and instrumental aggression, make a strong case for considering bullies’ behavior as being deliberate and targeted. We appreciate that this study does not explicitly measure whether these traits are evolutionarily adaptive as we lack appropriate outcome measures
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(such as increased dating partners). Nevertheless, we note that our results are consistent with the evolutionarily-adaptive model of bullying mentioned above and in other papers (Kolbert & Crothers, 2003; Volk et al., in press). Whether or not bullying is adaptive for bullies, the literature leaves no doubt that it is extremely maladaptive for victims (Hawker & Boulton, 2000). Our findings should be interpreted as an attempt to better understand bullying in order to try and prevent bullying. For example, working with (instead of against) bullies’ high Honesty–Humility scores by providing them with more effective, but prosocial, alternatives that achieve their goals. We believe that such an informed approach is better than continuing to stereotypically mislabel bullying as maladaptive behavior conducted by indiscriminately angry and aggressive individuals (e.g., Smokowski & Kopasz, 2005). 4.1.1. Limitations and future research A limitation of the current study was that it was based on information obtained via self-report measures. However, previous literature has shown that self-report is a valid method for measuring bullying (Pellegrini & Bartini, 2000) and personality (Lee & Ashton, 2004), allowing us to have confidence in our data. Another limitation is that our sample was relatively homogeneous in terms of race and SES. Third, the difference between the regression effect sizes of reactive and instrumental aggression were small, and thus some caution should be placed on related conclusions. Finally, our conclusions are based on cross-sectional correlational data, which limits our ability to draw causal conclusions. Future studies should therefore seek to replicate the current findings using longitudinal methods to study bullying and personality. This might reveal key changes that occur as both bullying (Volk et al., 2006) and personality (Helson, Kwan, John, & Jones, 2002) generally undergo changes during adolescence. Our results suggest that adolescent bullies possess personality traits and behavioral tendencies that are well suited towards engaging in an adaptive, bistrategic mode of behavior whereby they can bully victims, but can also be friendly towards allies. Finally, the value of personality, and in particular the HEXACO, as a predictor of bullying strongly suggests that future bullying research and/or interventions should seriously consider incorporating measures of personality such as the HEXACO. References Alcock, J. (1988). Animal behavior (4th ed). Sunderland, MA: Sinauer. Ashton, M., & Lee, K. (2001). A theoretical basis for the dimensions of personality. European Journal of Personality, 15, 327–353. Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2007). Empirical, theoretical, and practical advantages of the HEXACO model of personality structure. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11, 150–166. Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2008). The prediction of Honesty–Humility-related criteria by the HEXACO and Five-Factor models of personality. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 1216–1228. Ball, H. A., Arsenault, L., Taylor, A., Maughan, B., Caspi, A., & Moffitt, T. E. (2008). Genetic influences on victims, bullies, and bully-victims in childhood. The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 49, 104–112. Barry, C. T., Frick, P. J., DeShazo, T. M., McCoy, M. G., Ellis, M., & Loney, B. R. (2000). The importance of callous-unemotional traits for extending the concept of psychopathy to children. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 109, 335–340. Berger, K. S. (2007). Update on bullying at school: Science forgotten? Developmental Review, 27, 90–126. Bollmer, J. M., Harris, M. J., & Milich, R. (2006). Reactions to bullying and peer victimization: Narratives, physiological arousal, and personality. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 803–828. Bouchard, T. J., Jr., & Loehlin, J. C. (2001). Genes, evolution, and personality. Behavior Genetics, 31, 243–273. Briggs, J. L. (1970). Never in anger. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Caravita, S. C. S., Di Blasio, P., & Salmivalli, C. (2009). Unique and interactive effects of empathy and social status on involvement in bullying. Social Development, 18, 140–163. Connolly, I., & O’Moore, M. (2003). Personality and family relations of children who bully. Personality and Individual Differences, 35, 559–567.
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A.S. Book et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 52 (2012) 218–223 Turnbull, C. M. (1972). The mountain people. NY: Touchstone. Vaillancourt, T., Hymel, S., & McDougall, P. (2003). Bullying is power: Implications for school-based intervention strategies. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 19, 157–176. Veenstra, R., Lindenberg, S., Munniksma, A., & Dijkstra, J. K. (2010). The complex relation between bullying, victimization, acceptance, and rejection: Giving special attention to status, affection, and sex differences. Child Development, 81, 480–486. Viding, E., Simmonds, E., Petrides, K. V., & Frederickson, N. (2009). The contribution of callous-unemotional traits and conduct problems to bullying in early adolescence. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 50, 471–481. Volk, A., Camilleri, J., Dane, A., & Marini, Z. (in press). If, when, and why bullying is adaptive. In Shackelford, T., Shackelford, V. (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of
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Evolutionary Perspectives on Violence, Homicide, and War. NY: Oxford University Press. Volk, A., Craig, W., Boyce, W., & King, M. (2006). Adolescent risk correlates of bullying and different types of victimization. International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health, 18, 375–386. Volk, A. A., & Lagzdins, L. (2009). Bullying and victimization among adolescent girl athletes. Athletic Insight, 11, 12–25. Wolke, D., Woods, S., Bloomfield, L., & Karstadt, L. (2001). Bullying involvement in primary school and common health problems. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 85, 197–201.
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Adolescent bullying and personality: An adaptive approach Angela S. Book a, Anthony A. Volk b,⇑, Ashley Hosker a a b
Department of Psychology, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada L2S 3A1 Department of Child and Youth Studies, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada L2S 3A1
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 8 July 2011 Received in revised form 16 October 2011 Accepted 20 October 2011 Available online 10 November 2011 Keywords: Bullying Personality Adolescents HEXACO Evolution
a b s t r a c t From an evolutionary perspective, bullying behavior may be viewed as adaptive in nature. Moreover, as bullies may utilize both prosocial and aggressive means to achieve desired goals, they likely exhibit specific personality traits that allow for this bistrategic approach to survival. Therefore, after accounting for general aggression levels, bullying should be negatively associated with personality traits such as fairness and modesty (Honesty–Humility), but unrelated to traits such as forgiveness and tolerance (Agreeableness). Additionally, the intentional nature of the behavior suggests that bullying should be positively associated with instrumental, but not reactive, aggression. A sample of 310 adolescents completed measures of bullying, personality, and instrumental/reactive aggression. Results supported the hypotheses and are interpreted from an adaptive perspective. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Bullying behavior is defined as an imbalance of power between two individuals, where the stronger individual repeatedly causes harm to the weaker individual (Olweus, 1993). Adolescent bullying is a significant international problem (Pepler & Craig, 2008) with as many as 100–600 million adolescents directly involved with bullying worldwide, each year (Volk, Craig, Boyce, & King, 2006). Moreover, bullying has been document by anthropologists studying modern hunter-gatherers (e.g., Briggs, 1970; Turnbull, 1972) as well as historians documenting past cultures (Cunningham, 2005; Hsiung, 2005). Given its tremendous ubiquity across different times, cultures, and geographies, some researchers have suggested that bullying may be (in part) an evolved adaptation (Kolbert & Crothers, 2003; Volk, Camilleri, Dane, & Marini, in press). 1.1. Bullying as an adaptation The idea that bullying is, at least in part, the result of an evolved adaptation is supported by evidence beyond its ubiquity. Bullying is widespread amongst social animals ranging from fish (Alcock, 1988) to chickens (Masure & Allee, 1934) to chimpanzees (Goodall, 1986) where it is adaptive because it promotes access to physical, social, and/or sexual resources. Contrary to popular stereotypes, and unlike victims (Hawker & Boulton, 2000) or bully-victims (Mynard & Joseph, 1997), adolescent bullies do not appear to suffer many adverse effects from bullying beyond a heightened propensity to ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 905 688 5550; fax: +1 905 641 2509. E-mail address: [email protected] (A.A. Volk). 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.10.028
engage in antisocial behaviors (Berger, 2007). In fact, bullies appear to be better off than average adolescents with regard to mental health (Ireland, 2005; Juvonen, Graham, & Schuster, 2003; Volk et al., 2006), physical health (Wolke, Woods, Bloomfield, & Karstadt, 2001), popularity (de Bruyn, Cillessen, & Wissink, 2010; Juvonen et al., 2003), and social skills, including theory of mind, cognitive empathy, leadership, social competence, and self-efficacy (Caravita, Di Blasio, & Salmivalli, 2009; Sutton, Smith, & Swettenham, 1999; Vaillancourt, Hymel, & McDougall, 2003). As in other animals, bullying appears to be sexually adaptive as bullies start dating at a younger age, are more active with members of the opposite sex, report greater dating/mating opportunities, and are more likely to be in a dating relationship (Connolly, Pepler, Craig, & Taradash, 2000). Furthermore, in situations of scarce resources, bullying may also be adaptive by increasing physical resources (Turnbull, 1972). Taken together, these data suggest that bullying is a plausible adaptation in human adolescents (Volk et al., in press). A necessary, but not sufficient, condition for an adaptation is that it is linked to genes. In a cohort of over 1000 10 year-old twins genetic differences accounted for 61% of the variation in bullying (Ball et al., 2008). While it has yet to be determined exactly which genes are involved in bullying, one promising category of genes that influence bullying are those associated with personality (Volk et al., in press). A number of studies have shown that many aspects of personality have linkages with specific genes (e.g., DRD4 and aggression, Schmidt, Fox, Rubin, Hu, & Hamer, 2002; DRD4 and extraversion or 5-HTTPLR and neuroticism, Ebstein, 2006). These genes, and likely numerous others that have not been described, are plausible candidates for bullying given the significant connection between bullying and personality (Bouchard & Loehlin, 2001;
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Eysenck, 2006). This makes a study of personality and bullying highly relevant from an adaptive perspective. 1.2. Bullying and personality Over the last two decades bullying, as a general field, has attracted a significant amount of research attention (Berger, 2007). However, relatively little research has directly studied the link between personality and bullying. Olweus (1993) outlined the typical personality of bullies as being tolerant of violence, impulsive, and un empathic. Studies using the Eysenck Personality Inventory-Junior reported heightened levels of psychoticism and modest increases in extraversion and neuroticism amongst bullies (Connolly & O’Moore, 2003; Mynard & Joseph, 1997; Slee & Rigby, 1993). Italian studies of bullying and Big Five personality revealed that children who bullied tended to show a similar pattern of low Friendliness (Agreeableness) and higher Emotional Instability (Neuroticism; Menesini, Camodeca, & Nocentini, 2010; Tani, Greenman, Schneider, & Fregoso, 2003). A study amongst American children again found a negative correlation with Agreeableness, but no relationship with Neuroticism and a significant negative relationship with Conscientiousness (Bollmer, Harris, & Milich, 2006). Scholte and colleagues (2005) found that Undercontrollers (moderate to high scores on extraversion, low scores on Agreeableness and Conscientiousness) were more likely to bully other children. Bullying has also been linked to moderately higher levels of callous-unemotional (CU) traits that include lack of guilt, lack of empathy, poor affect, and use of another for personal gain (Barry et al., 2000; Viding, Simmonds, Petrides, & Frederickson, 2009). Thus the findings for bullying and personality are few, scattered in their measures, and largely atheoretical. We therefore propose studying personality and bullying using an adaptive theoretical viewpoint to explicitly shed light on why certain personality factors, and not others, are related to bullying. Ideally, this would involve using a personality scale that has an explicitly adaptive theoretical underpinning. As such, we chose to use the HEXACO (Ashton & Lee, 2007) to study the relationship between bullying and personality. 1.3. Current study The HEXACO is an evolutionarily-informed model of personality that extends the Big Five model of personality by adding a sixth factor: Honesty–Humility (Ashton & Lee, 2007). The HEXACO model includes Honesty–Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience (Ashton & Lee, 2001). Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness are very similar to the standard Big Five representations of these traits (Ashton & Lee, 2001; Digman, 1990). The additional factor of Honesty–Humility is characterized by truthfulness, fairness, sincerity, modesty, and lack of greed. Agreeableness is characterized by tolerance, forgiveness, and low aggression; note that the low pole of HEXACO Agreeableness includes anger-related traits that are associated with Big Five Neuroticism. Emotionality includes traits typically associated with Neuroticism in the Big Five model, such as anxiety, fearfulness, and emotional reactivity, but also adds sentimentality and dependence. With regards to studying antisocial behaviors, the HEXACO offers a significantly better fit with the antisocial ‘‘Dark Triad’’ personality traits as compared to the Big Five (Lee & Ashton, 2005). What’s more, the HEXACO differentiates between a willingness to exploit others (Honesty– Humility) and a tolerance and forgiveness of others (Agreeableness; Ashton & Lee, 2007). This is a critical distinction that differs from the general Agreeableness factor of the Big Five as it can
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potentially differentiate adolescents who are selectively aggressive from those who are generally aggressive. A significant body of research has shown that children and adolescents who are aggressive can enjoy significant adaptive benefits if they selectively employ both aggression and prosociality to obtain their goals (Hawley, Little, & Rodkin, 2007). Hawley has labeled these children as bistrategic controllers (Hawley, 2002, 2003) as they are able to employ two different strategies, one prosocial, one aggressive, to obtain control over desired resources. In support of relating Hawley’s theory to bullying is research showing that bullies are selective in their aggression, attacking easy victims and/or those who can’t hurt the bully’s social standing (Dijkstra, Lindenberg, & Veenstra, 2008; Veenstra, Lindenberg, Munniksma, & Dijkstra, 2010). Bullies also appear to selectively employ their aggression to maintain/create strategic alliances with desired adolescents (Pellegrini & Long, 2002). The HEXACO offers the ideal measure to test whether bullies’ personalities match the pattern of bistrategic control or whether they are generally aggressive. If bullies were the latter, we expect Honesty–Humility and Agreeableness to be equally important predictors of bullying. If however, bullying was a targeted behavior, we predict that bullying would be significantly negatively related to Honesty–Humility, but contrary to studies using the Big Five, there would not be a significant relationship with Agreeableness, particularly after aggressive behaviors were controlled for. Given our belief that bullying may be adaptive, we predict that any relationship between Agreeableness and bullying will be nullified by the inclusion of measures of general aggression as this would leave Agreeableness as a measure of sociability and capacity for reactive anger that is not confounded by a bullies’ targeted aggression towards their victims. Thus we predict that only instrumental aggression will be predictive of bullying. If bullying is meant to be a deliberate, targeted attempt at gaining resources in a manner similar to bistrategic aggressive children, then instrumental, and not reactive, aggression should be the predominant predictor. 2. Method 2.1. Participants A total of 310 adolescents (121 boys, 189 girls) between the ages of 10 and 18 (M = 13.6, SD = 3.2) involved in extracurricular athletic (e.g., hockey, gymnastics) or youth clubs (e.g., church youth groups, Pathfinders/Guides) from across Southern Ontario participated in the present study. The sample was generally White (85%; 13% Asian; 2% Black) and middle-class. 2.2. Measures Participants were asked to give information on demographics (as discussed above), followed by questionnaires pertaining to social relationships in school and their primary organization or athletic group (the latter were used for a concurrent study of athletes’ personal relationships). 2.2.1. Bullying Participants filled out a bullying questionnaire (Volk & Lagzdins, 2009) asking how often in the last school term they had taken the role as a bully in terms of racial/ethnic, physical, verbal, indirect, or sexual bullying at school. For example, participants were asked questions such as, ‘‘In school, how often have you made fun of someone much weaker or less popular because of their religion or race last term?’’, with answers ranging in frequency from one (that hasn’t happened) to five (several times a week). A total score was created for bullying by totaling the values for each form of
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bullying. This bullying scale has five items with a reliability coefficient of a = .82. Further support for the cohesive structure of the bullying scale comes from a principal components analysis (unrotated). Only one eigenvalue exceeded 1.0, and the scree plot supported the one component solution. Component loadings ranged from .45 to .81 for the five items. 2.2.2. Personality Participants provided self-reports on the 100-item version of the HEXACO Personality Inventory—Revised (HEXACO-PI-R; e.g., Lee & Ashton, 2004). Each item uses a five-point response scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). The HEXACO-PI-R contains six broad factor-level scales, each of which subsumes four facet-level scales. (An additional facet scale, Altruism versus Antagonism, was designed to load on several factors). The 100 item HEXACO-PI-R was obtained from www.hexaco.org (Ashton & Lee, 2008). The reliability coefficients for the HEXACO-PI-R in this study ranged from a = .73–.78. 2.2.3. Aggression Aggression was measured using the instrumental and reactive aggression scales development by Little and colleagues (2003). Each form of aggression asked 12 questions using a four-point response scale (1 = not at all true to 4 = completely true). The reliability coefficients for instrumental aggression was a = .89 while for reactive aggression a = .92. A sample item from the proactive scale was ‘‘I often hit, kick, or punch others to get what I want’’, while a sample item from the reactive scale was ‘‘If others have angered me, I often hit, kick or punch them’’. 2.3. Procedure Local extracurricular organizations were contacted through existing connections with the researchers and through email solicitations. Adult supervisors were briefed and asked to provide written consent to approach their adolescent participants. Researchers then visited participating clubs to brief participants about the study and its methods. To reduce participant bias, participants were told it was a study of peer relationships. Participants were give two envelopes to bring home. The first envelope contained a parental letter of information and consent. The second envelope contained a participant letter of assent and the questionnaires, which they completed in private, at a time of their choosing. Both parental consent and participant assent were required. Parents were asked to not discuss the study prior to its completion to avoid biasing the adolescent’s answers. Participants were protected from any personal liability associated with their answers and participation was voluntary with no penalty for withdrawing. At a predetermined date, the participants returned their forms and received a verbal debriefing. After this debriefing, participants were asked to complete a second assent form because of the incomplete initial briefing. The participants then received $20 for their participation. These methods were approved by the Brock University Research Ethics Board. 3. Results 3.1. Descriptive data We calculated the means for age, bullying, the HEXACO, and aggression for adolescent boys and girls. A one-way ANOVA revealed that boys had significantly higher bullying and instrumental aggression scores than girls, while girls had significantly higher scores on Honesty–Humility, Emotionality, and Openness (see Table 1).
3.2. Univariate correlations Next we calculated the zero-order correlations between the variables (see Table 2). Bullying was significantly negatively correlated with Honesty–Humility, Emotionality, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness traits. Bullying was significantly positively related to both instrumental and reactive aggression. Honesty– Humility had significant negative correlations with both dimensions of aggression, while Agreeableness appeared to be more strongly correlated with reactive aggression. 3.3. Bullying hierarchical linear regression The relationships of the independent variables with bullying were analyzed using a 3-step hierarchical linear regression. The first step included age and sex, the second included the HEXACO, and the measures of aggression were entered on the third step to determine whether they altered any of the relationships between bullying and the HEXACO items. The results of the regression can be seen in Table 3. The regression model explained just over a quarter of the variance for bullying (26.0%). Being a boy and being older were both positive predictors of bullying. Honesty–Humility and Agreeableness were significant negative predictors in step two, but Honesty–Humility remained the only significant personality factor once the two measures of aggression were added. As predicted, instrumental aggression significantly predicted bullying, but reactive aggression did not (although its p = .06). 4. Discussion We examined the relationship between adolescents’ bullying and a measure of personality while controlling for general aggression. As predicted, we found significant relationships with bullying for both our personality measure of Honesty–Humility as well as the measure of instrumental aggression. Also as predicted, in the final step of the regression both Agreeableness and reactive aggression were not significant predictors of adolescent bullying. We suggest that these results are consistent with the hypothesis that bullying is adaptive. They demonstrate that bullies can engage in targeted aggression while still maintaining the capacity for supportive friendships, unlike popular stereotypes of bullies that depict them as maladaptive aggressors (e.g., Smokowski & Kopasz, 2005). 4.1. Bullying and personality At the univariate level, adolescents’ bullying was correlated with a number of personality traits. Similar to previous studies, Agreeableness, Emotionality, and Conscientiousness were all significantly negatively correlated with bullying (Bollmer et al., 2006; Tani et al., 2003). This offers confidence about the construct validity of our results as they broadly replicate what other studies have found and confirm the importance of personality traits in understanding bullying. However, our results go beyond those of previous studies. The largest personality correlate of bullying was Honesty–Humility, which fits with its hypothesized role in predicting antisocial behavior (Lee & Ashton, 2005). The importance of Honesty–Humility is reminiscent of the significant correlation between Callous-Unemotional traits and bullying (Viding et al., 2009). The predictive relationship of sex and age in our regression agree with previous literature given that boys are well known to bully more than girls on average, while bullying peaks mid-way through adolescence, so one might well expect a modest correlation with age across our sample (Volk et al., 2006). What is perhaps
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A.S. Book et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 52 (2012) 218–223 Table 1 Mean Scores and sex differences for adolescent participants (N = 310). Variable
$ Mean
$ SD
# Mesn
# SD
Age
14.45
1.84
14.05
1.47
3.78
.99
1.69
2.1
2.93
16.81**
3.41 3.49 3.52 3.04 3.27 3.18
.60 .54 .53 .51 .57 .60
3.05 2.86 3.57 3.10 3.16 2.97
.53 .49 .49 .53 .56 .53
28.10** 98.10** .75 1.12 2.68 8.14**
23.37 15.48
6.42 4.70
24.73 17.98
7.19 7.23
2.78 12.82**
Bullying Total bullying HEXACO Honesty–Humility Emotionality Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Openness Aggression Reactive Instrumental **
F(1, 289)
p < .01.
Table 2 Correlations between bullying, aggression, and personality traits in adolescents (N P 287). H Bully H E X A C O Reactive * **
.36* –
E
X
A
C
O
Reactive
Instrumental
.11* .28** –
.05 .02 .06 –
.24* .31** .04 .21** –
.18** .21** .04 .14** .20** –
.08 .21* .15** .14** .10* .25** –
.39** .43** .07 .09 .44** .25** .18** –
.40** .46** .11* .04 .27** .19** .15** .63**
p < .05. p < .01.
Table 3 Hierarchical linear regression for adolescent personality, aggression, and bullying (N = 310). Variable Step 1 Age Sex Step 2 Age Sex Honesty–Humility Emotionality Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Openness Step 3 Age Sex Honesty–Humility Emotionality Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Openness Reactive aggression Instrumental aggression * **
B
SE B
B
D r2
.107**
.107**
.214**
.046**
.260**
.107 .31 1.24
.08 .27
.23** .26**
.24 .98 .99 .17 .01 .56 .33 .07
.08 .30 .24 .24 .25 .26 .23 .23
.18** .21** .25** .05 .00 .12* .08 .02
.19 .86 .60 .13 .01 .29 .23 .14 .05 .06
.07 .30 .25 .23 .24 .27 .22 .22 .03 .03
.14** .18** .16** .03 .00 .07 .06 .04 .14 .16*
Model r2 **
p < .05. p < .01.
most encouraging is that we were able to obtain a large effect, explaining a quarter of the variance in adolescents’ bullying using a simple regression model based on age, sex, a measure of personality, and two complimentary measures of aggression. This highlights the potential utility of personality traits in predicting
bullying amongst adolescents. Our multivariate results confirmed our hypothesis that the most critical multivariate predictor is not Agreeableness, but Honesty–Humility. They also emphasize the unique advantage of using the HEXACO as opposed to the Big Five model, as Honesty–Humility predicted bullying above and beyond Agreeableness. Agreeableness was a significant univariate predictor but it was no longer a significant predictor when measures of general aggression were entered. Rather, its correlations show it to be a better predictor of anger/reactive aggression than planned proactive aggression. When one considers the personality of aggressive individuals, a measure of aggression (like the Big Five or HEXACO Agreeableness) is almost certainly going to be confounded with general aggression. In other words, it is no surprise that aggressive bullies show aggressive personality traits. What is perhaps surprising is that when aggressive behavior is controlled for, bullies appear to be as agreeable as other adolescents and that agreeableness is more strongly related to reactive rather than proactive aggression. This is crucially important as it could allow bullies to maintain adaptive close relationships with their allies while at the same time using aggression to adaptively target victims in order to gain control over the physical or social resources they desire. The selective nature of bullies’ aggression is reinforced by our findings that instrumental aggression was a significant multivariate predictor of bullying while reactive aggression was not. Despite a trend towards reactive aggression being a significant predictor, it nevertheless appeared to be a weaker multivariate predictor than instrumental aggression. Indeed, the two significant (non-demographic) predictors in our final regression, Honesty–Humility and instrumental aggression, make a strong case for considering bullies’ behavior as being deliberate and targeted. We appreciate that this study does not explicitly measure whether these traits are evolutionarily adaptive as we lack appropriate outcome measures
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(such as increased dating partners). Nevertheless, we note that our results are consistent with the evolutionarily-adaptive model of bullying mentioned above and in other papers (Kolbert & Crothers, 2003; Volk et al., in press). Whether or not bullying is adaptive for bullies, the literature leaves no doubt that it is extremely maladaptive for victims (Hawker & Boulton, 2000). Our findings should be interpreted as an attempt to better understand bullying in order to try and prevent bullying. For example, working with (instead of against) bullies’ high Honesty–Humility scores by providing them with more effective, but prosocial, alternatives that achieve their goals. We believe that such an informed approach is better than continuing to stereotypically mislabel bullying as maladaptive behavior conducted by indiscriminately angry and aggressive individuals (e.g., Smokowski & Kopasz, 2005). 4.1.1. Limitations and future research A limitation of the current study was that it was based on information obtained via self-report measures. However, previous literature has shown that self-report is a valid method for measuring bullying (Pellegrini & Bartini, 2000) and personality (Lee & Ashton, 2004), allowing us to have confidence in our data. Another limitation is that our sample was relatively homogeneous in terms of race and SES. Third, the difference between the regression effect sizes of reactive and instrumental aggression were small, and thus some caution should be placed on related conclusions. Finally, our conclusions are based on cross-sectional correlational data, which limits our ability to draw causal conclusions. Future studies should therefore seek to replicate the current findings using longitudinal methods to study bullying and personality. This might reveal key changes that occur as both bullying (Volk et al., 2006) and personality (Helson, Kwan, John, & Jones, 2002) generally undergo changes during adolescence. Our results suggest that adolescent bullies possess personality traits and behavioral tendencies that are well suited towards engaging in an adaptive, bistrategic mode of behavior whereby they can bully victims, but can also be friendly towards allies. Finally, the value of personality, and in particular the HEXACO, as a predictor of bullying strongly suggests that future bullying research and/or interventions should seriously consider incorporating measures of personality such as the HEXACO. References Alcock, J. (1988). Animal behavior (4th ed). Sunderland, MA: Sinauer. Ashton, M., & Lee, K. (2001). A theoretical basis for the dimensions of personality. European Journal of Personality, 15, 327–353. Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2007). Empirical, theoretical, and practical advantages of the HEXACO model of personality structure. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11, 150–166. Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2008). The prediction of Honesty–Humility-related criteria by the HEXACO and Five-Factor models of personality. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 1216–1228. Ball, H. A., Arsenault, L., Taylor, A., Maughan, B., Caspi, A., & Moffitt, T. E. (2008). Genetic influences on victims, bullies, and bully-victims in childhood. The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 49, 104–112. Barry, C. T., Frick, P. J., DeShazo, T. M., McCoy, M. G., Ellis, M., & Loney, B. R. (2000). The importance of callous-unemotional traits for extending the concept of psychopathy to children. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 109, 335–340. Berger, K. S. (2007). Update on bullying at school: Science forgotten? Developmental Review, 27, 90–126. Bollmer, J. M., Harris, M. J., & Milich, R. (2006). Reactions to bullying and peer victimization: Narratives, physiological arousal, and personality. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 803–828. Bouchard, T. J., Jr., & Loehlin, J. C. (2001). Genes, evolution, and personality. Behavior Genetics, 31, 243–273. Briggs, J. L. (1970). Never in anger. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Caravita, S. C. S., Di Blasio, P., & Salmivalli, C. (2009). Unique and interactive effects of empathy and social status on involvement in bullying. Social Development, 18, 140–163. Connolly, I., & O’Moore, M. (2003). Personality and family relations of children who bully. Personality and Individual Differences, 35, 559–567.
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