Mother-child emotional availability in ecological perspective: three countries, two regions, two genders

This study used a cross-national framework to examine country, region, and gender differences in emotional availability (EA), a prominent index of mutual socioemotional adaptation in the parent-child dyad. Altogether 220 Argentine, Italian, and U.S. mothers and their daughters and sons from both rural and metropolitan areas took part in home observations when the children were 20 months old. In terms of country, Italian mothers were more sensitive and optimally structuring, and Italian children were more responsive and involving, than Argentine and U.S. dyads. In terms of region, rural mothers were more intrusive than metropolitan mothers, and boys from metropolitan areas were more responsive than boys from rural areas. In terms of gender, mothers of girls were more sensitive and optimally structuring than mothers of boys, and daughters were more responsive and involving than sons. Understanding how country, region, and gender influence EA exposes forces that shape child development, parent-infant interaction, and family systems.     

The Role of Masculinity in Children’s Bullying

The aim of the present study was to explore the association between gender role, in terms of self-attribution of masculine and feminine characteristics, and children's involvement in bullying problems during the elementary-school years. A total of 113, six- to ten-year-old children completed self-report measures of bullying and victimization and a masculinity–femininity scale. Their teachers provided ratings of pupils’ reactive and proactive aggressive behavior. Data from a hierarchical regression on bullying scores showed that, irrespective of sex, masculine traits predicted active bullying behavior. Moreover, bullying was also related to victimization and to teacher's evaluation of reactive aggression. Our findings suggest the need for longitudinal and cross-cultural studies in this line of research.     

Perceived collective efficacy to stop aggression at school: A validation of an Italian and a Swedish version of a scale for adolescents

Collective efficacy to stop peer aggression in the school context refers to adolescents’ beliefs about the capability of students and teachers in their school to work together to counteract aggressive behaviours among peers. This study presents the Italian and Swedish versions of a recently developed scale to measure the construct. Factorial structure and measurement invariance of the scale were assessed in two samples of adolescents aged 10–15 years. The findings support both a two-dimensional and a three-dimensional scale across gender and countries, demonstrating the importance of making distinctions between different forms of aggression when measuring collective efficacy to stop aggression. A one-dimensional scale was only supported in the Swedish sample. The results support the use of the Collective Efficacy to Stop Aggression scale with both Italian and Swedish adolescents.     

Does empathy predict adolescents' bullying and defending behavior?

Through structural equation modeling, this study tested a path of relations in which different levels of empathic responsiveness were posited to be differently associated to bullying and defending behavior. Three hundred and eighteen Italian adolescents (142 girls and 176 boys; mean age = 13.2 years) completed the Davis's Interpersonal Reactivity Index [Davis, 1983] for empathy and the Participant role scales [Salmivalli et al., 1996] for bullying and defending behavior. The results revealed that the model fitted the data adequately, but only in the case of boys. As hypothesized, low levels of empathic responsiveness were associated to students' involvement in bullying others. In contrast, empathy was positively associated with actively helping victimized schoolmates. However, the estimates algorithm did not reach convergence with girls' data. The current findings confirm and extend the literature on the relation between empathy, prosociality and aggressive behavior. Educational implications are also discussed.     

Individual and class moral disengagement in bullying among elementary school children

A cross‐sectional study from a sample of 663 elementary school children assessed the four sets of moral disengagement mechanisms conceptualized by Bandura (i.e., cognitive restructuring, minimizing one's agentive role, disregarding/distorting the consequences, blaming/dehumanizing the victim) at both the individual and the class level. Additionally, an analysis of the relations of these mechanisms to pro‐bullying behavior was conducted. Multilevel analysis showed a significant relationship between cognitive restructuring and individual pro‐bullying behavior. Moreover, between‐class variability of pro‐bullying behavior was positively related to minimizing one's agentive role and blaming/dehumanizing the victim at the class level. Conversely, class disregarding/distorting the consequences was negatively associated with between‐class variation in the outcome behavior. Implications for understanding the role of morality in children's bullying are discussed. Aggr. Behav. 38:378‐388, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Main and Moderated Effects of Moral Cognition and Status on Bullying and Defending

This study analyzed the relations of two dimensions of moral cognition (i.e., acceptance of moral transgression and moral disengagement) and two forms of status in the peer group (i.e., social preference and perceived popularity) with bullying and defending among 235 primary‐school children and 305 middle‐school early adolescents. Social status was tested as a moderator of the associations between moral cognition and bullying and defending. Participants completed self‐reports assessing the two dimensions of moral cognition and peer nominations for status, bullying, and defending. Both acceptance of moral transgression and moral disengagement were associated to bullying among early adolescents only, whereas in childhood moral disengagement was linked to defending among girls. Social status moderated the associations between morality dimensions and bullying and defending. The moderating effects of status were discussed considering status as a magnifying lens for the relations between individual characteristics and social behavior. The results were also discussed with reference to age and gender differences in the associations. Aggr. Behav. 38:456‐468, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Behavior during cyberbullying episodes: Initial validation of a new self-report scale

Research on cyberbullying has been growing worldwide, with much of the focus on the characteristics of perpetrators and targets of cyberbullying. In recent years, increasing attention has been paid on bystanders of cyber-attacks. This study presents the Italian validation of a newly developed self-report scale that measures different forms of participation in cyberbullying, namely cyberbullying, cybervictimization, cyber-defending and cyber-passive bystanding. We used responses from 561 young adolescents (289 girls; mean age = 12 years, 1 month; SD = 9 months) attending middle schools in Italy. A 16-item scale was developed paralleling the content of an already existing scale that measures young adolescents’ behavior in traditional bullying. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the four-dimensional structure of the scale and the four subscale's scores showed acceptable levels of internal consistency. Multigroup analyses demonstrated full scalar invariance of the scale across gender groups. Finally, each behavior in the electronic context was positively correlated with its counterpart in the school context, suggesting certain stability across contexts. It is concluded that the scale may be a first, promising attempt to measure different youths’ behavior during cyberbullying episodes.