Bullying is a pervasive problem among children and adolescents worldwide, but relevant research, although growing, lacks coherence. The proposed study is the first to integrate three large bodies of research - on children's attachment, anger, and Social Information Processing (SIP) - in a comprehensive, developmentally informed, multi-method, multi-trait design to elucidate the origins of bullying behavior, victimization, and anti-bullying attitudes and emotions. It was predicted that (1) children's early attachment insecurity would be linked to their maladaptive SIP patterns and to higher anger proneness; (2) higher anger proneness would be associated with maladaptive SIP; (3) anger proneness and maladaptive SIP would both predict greater parent-reported aggression; (4) parent-reported aggression would predict both bullying behavior and victimization; (5) lower anger proneness and more adaptive SIP would be associated with anti-bullying attitudes and sympathy for victims of bullying. A series of path analyses revealed overall well-fitting models; however, the analyses of the specific pathways described in the hypotheses above were less conclusive. Theoretical and empirical evidence suggests that attachment security, anger proneness, and social information processing each plays a role in the development of positive or negative peer relations, but how these factors come together needs to be further elucidated.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uiowa.edu/oai:ir.uiowa.edu:etd-5410 |
| Date | 01 July 2014 |
| Creators | Nordling, Jamie Koenig |
| Contributors | Kochańska, Grażyna |
| Publisher | University of Iowa |
| Source Sets | University of Iowa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | Copyright 2014 Jamie Koenig Nordling |
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