The relationship between bullying and animal abuse behaviors in adolescents: The importance of witnessing animal abuse

Abstract

Children's abuse of animals may be predictive of aggression towards humans. This study assessed concurrent engagement in animal abuse and bullying behaviour in 241 adolescents aged 12 to 16 years. A total of 20.6% of youths reported abusing animals at least “sometimes” and 17.8% reported bullying others on at least one occasion in the past year. Multiple regression analyses revealed witnessing animal abuse to be a common predictive factor for each of animal abuse and bullying. However, family conflict was a significant predictor only for animal abuse, while victimization by peers was a significant predictor only for bullying. Although there were both common and differentiating predictive variables for each behavior, the finding that witnessing animal abuse was predictive of both is supportive of past research and warrants further research attention. The findings have significant implications for the prevention and intervention of bullying and animal abuse behaviors.