Motivations at the Automatic and Deliberate level to bully

Bullying among youth is a major problem with devastating consequences for victims. In order to develop effective anti-bullying programs, we have to understand what drives bullying behavior.

Research has mainly focused on striving for high status on the deliberate level, but found only weak associations with bullying. We thus may be overlooking other (status) motivations that impact bullying involvement to a much greater extent.

I therefore propose that not only the motivation to ‘be on top’, but also the motivation to ‘not dangle at the bottom’ plays an important role in bullying and supporting bullies.

In addition, as some youth may not be able or willing to truthfully report their deliberate status motivation, I propose to examine motivation at the automatic level through implicit and physiological measures.The aim of the current MAD2bully project thus is to uncover the role of status motivation in bullying and following bullies.

This will be achieved by examining both the reward value of high status and the threat value of low status, on the deliberate level as well as on the automatic level.

To assess these innovative new concepts, I will develop and test new state-of-the-art measures of status motivation in Study 1.

In Study 2, I will use these measures in a longitudinal multi-method multi-informant design, together with assessments of bullying and following behavior, and developmental, individual, and contextual risk and protective factors. The insights from this project will radically change our understanding of why youth engage in or support bullying.

Moreover, the results from this project will also facilitate bully risk-assessments in classrooms and aid the development of effective anti-bullying and anti-following interventions that target the right type of status motivation for each type of bullying involvement.