Ganging up or sticking together? Group processes and children's responses to text‐message bullying

Abstract

Drawing on social identity theory and intergroup emotion theory (IET), we examined group processes underlying bullying behaviour. Children were randomly assigned to one of three groups: a perpetrator's group, a target's group, or a third party group. They then read a gender-consistent scenario in which the norm of the perpetrator's group (to be kind or unkind towards others) was manipulated, and an instance of cyberbullying between the perpetrator's group and a member of the target's group was described. It was found that group membership, group norms, and the proposed antecedents of the group-based emotions of pride, shame, and anger (but not guilt) influenced group-based emotions and action tendencies in ways predicted by social identity and IET. The results underline the importance of understanding group-level emotional reactions when it comes to tackling bullying, and show that being part of a group can be helpful in overcoming the negative effects of bullying.