Social information-processing mechanisms and school-bullying profiles among adolescents

Introduction. Bullying is an insidious aggressive behavior characterized by repetitiveness, imbalance of power (a bully dominating his victim) and intent to do harm. People can fall into four different categories: bully, victim, bully/victim or not involved. While numerous researchers have explored the psychopathological consequences of intimidation, few of them have studied the way students with different profiles process social information. Objective. The aim of this study was to explore whether there are specific ways of processing social information in relation to the bullying profile. We refer to the theoretical model of Crick and Dodge (1994) and assume that this information will be processed differently depending on the adolescent's bullying profile. Method. Seven hundred and seventeen (717) secondary school students took part in semi-structured individual interviews and answered several questionnaires related to bullying and social information processing mechanisms. Results. - The main results show links between social information processing mechanisms and the bullying profiles. Bullies, victims and bully/victims show biases in their social information processing mechanisms at different stages of the model. Conclusion. - Specific cognitive patterns seem to exist in relation to the bullying profile. These results provide a better understanding of the way adolescents process social information and open-up new perspectives for preventing bullying in schools. (C) 2015 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.