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

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Social cognition and moral cognition in bullying: What’s wrong? Abstract Two different models have been proposed that describe the bully alternatively as a child lacking in social skills (Crick & Dodge, 1994), or as a cold manipulative individual, who leads gangs to achieve personal goals (Sutton, Smith, & Swettenham, 1999a). The present study examined the performance of 204 8-11-year-olds in a set of stories that assessed understanding of cognitions and emotions, in relation to their Participant Role in bullying. Moreover, children’s understanding of moral emotions and proneness to moral disengagement was assessed. Victims showed some difficulties in the social cognition task, whereas bullies did not. Aggressive children, instead, were found to be more ready to show moral disengagement mechanisms, whereas defenders showed higher levels of moral sensibility. Results are discussed in relation to the two models, and the need for further research into empathy and moral cognition of children involved in bullying episodes is highlighted. 2
Social cognition and moral cognition in bullying: What’s wrong? Over the last twenty years, the literature about the development of aggressive behavior showed an increasing interest in the study of the relations between cognition, social information processing and social interaction in children and adolescents (e.g., Crick & Dodge, 1994; Harvey, Fletcher, & French, 2001). In particular, several authors studied how the social information processing strategies used by children and the way in which they interpret situational cues and use their previous experiences can influence their aggressive conduct (Dodge & Price, 1994; Huesmann & Guerra, 1997; Randall, 1997). One of the most important results of this field of research has been the possibility to identify the presence of specific deficits and systematic biases in some components of the social cognition of aggressive children. These results led Dodge and colleagues to formulate the “Social Skills Deficit” model (Crick & Dodge, 1994; Dodge, 1980). According to the first formulation of this model, in which reactive and proactive categories of aggression were not clearly distinguished, aggressive children show some difficulties in one or more phases of their social information processing. For example, these authors found that aggressive children tend to interpret ambiguous situations in an aggressive way more than their non aggressive peers (hostile attributional bias) (Dodge & Frame, 1982; Dodge & Somberg, 1987). Another difference between aggressive and non aggressive children refers to the selection of the behavioral response in a social situation: the former, in fact, seem to have a more limited range of non aggressive answers than the latter and, for this reason, they are more inclined to choose and perform aggressive behaviors, especially in the case of interpersonal conflicts (Dodge, 1980; 3
Page 1: Social cognition and moral cognitio
Page 5 and 6: mind task). The relevance of these
Page 7 and 8: eal conduct, which may not necessar
Page 9 and 10: Quite recently, the “traditional
Page 11 and 12: emotion as an expression of what is
Page 13 and 14: divided into six scales, which refe
Page 15 and 16: emotions (happiness, sadness, anger
Page 17 and 18: especially for younger children. Th
Page 19 and 20: in which the reference to mental st
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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