Not my Child: Perceptions of Bullied Students with Behavioral Differences and Teacher Responses

Abstract

Autistic children are at greater risk of becoming victims of bullying than their neurotypical peers (Park et al., 2020). The current study examines participants’ attitudes toward children with behavioral differences and whether they support or condone bullying toward these children under various conditions. Participants were randomly assigned to read one of four vignettes. The vignettes describe a situation where a bullied fourth-grade student (with or without an outburst) went to the teacher for assistance, and the teacher responded (positively or negatively). The vignettes omitted the words autism, developmental disorder, and diagnosis to limit respondent bias concerning the social obligations to perceive these labels in a certain way. Participants then completed a questionnaire designed to assess their attitudes toward the child they read about. Participants in the positive teacher response condition reported that the student with an outburst “deserved” to be bullied significantly more than the student without an outburst. This topic has not been researched in depth, and future research should expand upon this study to fully understand the biases toward children with behavioral differences.