Social cognition and moral cognition in bullying: What's ... - DPSS

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Aims of the study and hypotheses The first aim of the present study was to assess the performance of these pupils in a social-cognition task similar to the one used by Sutton et al. (1999b). In this task, the same two typologies of stories used by Sutton and colleagues were used: cognitive and emotion stories. The cognitive stories, in particular, assessed the child’s ability to understand mental states, beliefs and intentions of the character of the story. The emotion stories, instead, assessed the ability to understand emotional states of the character and the possibility that an emotion could be dissimulated to influence and modify others’ knowledge. Contrary to the idea of the bully as a social “oaf”, it is hypothesized that the Bully group will perform better than, or at least at the same level as, other pupils in a theory of mind task that requires understanding the thoughts, beliefs, intentions that guide others’ behavior. Moreover, in addition to these two kinds of stories, a third category (moral stories), not used by Sutton et al. (1999b), was designed in order to explore the role of moral emotions in the context of aggressive conduct. The second aim of the present study, therefore, was to analyze the ability to understand moral emotions (guilt and shame) within hypothetical social scenarios by children who assume different roles. Considering the literature about moral cognition in aggressive behavior (e.g., Hoffman, 2000; Quiles & Bybee, 1997; Tagney, 1992), it was expected that Bullies would perform worse than non-aggressive mates in moral stories, that is be less likely to make the correct attribution of moral emotions to the character of the story owing to his/her negative behavior. In contrast, Defenders should be particularly sensitive to this kind of 10
emotion as an expression of what is right and what is wrong and, therefore, we expected this group of children to perform better than any other in this type of stories. Finally, the third aim of the study was to consider the relation between moral disengagement and bullying behavior (e.g., Caprara et al., 1995; Menesini et al., 1999). The comparison among pupils who assume different roles may lead to a deeper understanding of the importance of these mechanisms in bullying episodes. Specifically, we expected that the tendency to activate moral disengagement mechanisms would be higher in aggressive children (the Bullies and their Followers). In contrast, we hypothesized that Victims and those children who frequently intervene to defend their victimized classmates (Defenders) would show a higher moral sensibility and, consequently, a lower level of moral disengagement. Participants Method The initial sample comprised 581 Italian primary-school children (295 boys and 286 girls) aged between 8 and 11 years (mean age = 9;7 years, s.d. = 11 months). Although socio-economic status was not directly measured, our sample included students from a wide range of social backgrounds (low and working classes through upper middle class). In terms of racial/ethnic background, the sample was predominantly Caucasian (96%), with a small proportion of Asian (2%) and North African (2%) origin. All children received school and parental permission to participate prior to the collection of the data. 11
Page 1 and 2: Social cognition and moral cognitio
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Page 5 and 6: mind task). The relevance of these
Page 7 and 8: eal conduct, which may not necessar
Page 9: Quite recently, the “traditional
Page 13 and 14: divided into six scales, which refe
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Page 17 and 18: especially for younger children. Th
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Page 21 and 22: level of moral disengagement than b
Page 23 and 24: not suggest a direct application of
Page 25 and 26: that is their thoughts, beliefs and
Page 27 and 28: emotional abilities, having psychos
Page 29 and 30: Boulton, M., & Smith, P. K. (1994).
Page 31 and 32: Gini, G., Albiero, P., & Benelli, B
Page 33 and 34: Kaukiainen, A., Björkqvist, K., Ö
Page 35 and 36: Sharp, S., & Smith, P. K. (1994). T
Page 37 and 38: Table I. Distribution of Participan
Page 39 and 40: Table III. Participant Roles and me
Page 41: Figure 1. Participant Roles and Mor

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