Psychological determinants of bullying behavior in adolescents

Abstract

The article shows the data which have been found through a research on a sample of 286 adolescents from three high schools in The Braila County, Romania. There have been used several sequences as working tools: one for measuring the intensity of bullying and victimization behavior, another for measuring the level of self-esteem and the third for measuring the level of personality traits: extraversion, psychoticism, neuroticism, behavioral deviance and dissimulation. Taking into consideration the relationship between bullying and self-esteem, it has been shown that there is no statistically significant correlation between self-esteem and bullying behavior. Therefore it has been proved a statistically significant correlation between self-esteem and victimization but an inverse one. The case study conducted in a humanities class, in a high school with top-class students, composed mostly of teenage girls, demonstrated that most of the girl-students involved in acts of harassment-intimidation had high self-esteem. All the investigated personality traits generate statistically significant correlations with either bullying or victimization or both bullying relationship components. All investigated personality traits generate statistically significant correlations with either bullying or victimization or both components of the bullying relationship.