Abstract
This study investigated the influence of meta-representational aspects on bullying. Meta-representation was operationalized in terms of the metalinguistic skill to produce conventional definitions, reflecting culturally shared representations and of the meta-level capacity to represent others’ mental states underlying empathic disposition. One hundred and seventeen children, aged between 8;5 and 10;11 years, completed a definitional task and self-report questionnaires on bullying roles and empathic disposition. Descriptive, correlational, and regression analyses were performed. Results confirmed that hostile roles are negatively related to definitional competence and to empathic disposition. Lack of definitional competence was the main predictor (accounting for about 16% of variance), followed by empathy (explaining a further 6% of variance) of Primary School children’s disposition to assume aggressive behaviors. These findings suggest that a lack of general meta-representational abilities may hinder the development of abstract and other-centered perspective taking, and compromise (compromising) social adjustment. This implies the need to work, particularly in school, on enhancing meta-representational and metalinguistic skills, such as the ability to recognize mental states and verbally make explicit cultural-semantic word meaning representations.
Highlights
The present contribution aims to understand the relationship between the metalinguistic capacity to provide conventional word definitions, empathic disposition, and children’s behavior in bullying episodes
As regards the effects of age on empathy and roles, again age was not included because the literature on these issues is still controversial and because the role of age in these fields was not the focus of the study
The main aim of the present study was to analyze the inverse relationships of the disposition to adopt hostile roles with the ability to define words
Summary
The present contribution aims to understand the relationship between the metalinguistic capacity to provide conventional word definitions, empathic disposition, and children’s behavior in bullying episodes. Belacchi (2008) identified two other roles: the Mediator, who actively attempts to reconcile the Bully and Victim, indirectly supporting the latter, and the Consoler who, without directly intervening in the situation, tries to mitigate the effects of the bullying by comforting the Victim; both of these roles are related to the Defender role and more analytically operationalize the spontaneous pro-social tendency to intervene in interpersonal conflicts among peers in a group setting In this model, the Outsider role is positively associated with hostile roles and negatively with pro-social ones, confirming the essentially aggressive attitude of Outsiders
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