Friends like these: Peer relationships in childhood and adolescence

1. Friends like these:Peer relationships in childhood and adolescence Dr. Siân Jones, CPsychol sianjones@brookes.ac.uk @SianOxBrookes #PITPfriends http://throughtheacademiclookingglass. wordpress.com

2. Navigating the playground What happens when peer relationships break down? What role does the friendship group have in maintaining or resisting bullying? What are the “rules” of friendship groups? What is the role of humour in friendship groups?

3. friendships

4. friendships Friendship: a mutual relationship between two or more people (Bukowski, Newcomb, & Hartup, 1996). Measuring Friendships: Has its basis in sociometry (Moreno, 1930) and involves asking children to nominate their friends. The number of “reciprocal friends” that a child has can then be determined. Peer Acceptance: a measure of a child’s liking by their peers.

5. Friendships matter Children have a need to feel that they belong to groups Belonging has an influential bearing on children’s self-worth Work has started to explain the processes underpinning children’s behaviour in groups, including the role of group membership.

6. Bullying? ACADEMIC DEFINITIONS Farrington (1993): Bullying is repeated oppression of a less powerful person, physical or psychological, by a more powerful person. Smith & Sharp (1994): The systematic abuse of power. Rigby (2002): Bullying involves a desire to hurt + a harmful action + a power imbalance + (typically) repetition + an unjust use of power + evident enjoyment by the aggressor and generally a sense of being oppressed on the part of the victim.

7. Bullying stats Ground-breaking work conducted by Olweus (1978) in Scandinavia. “Evidence from school inspections, pupil surveys, independent research and parent and child help-lines suggests that bullying is a significant and serious problem” (‘Safe to Learn’, DCSF, 2007) Evidence that 29.6% of UK schoolchildren aged 8-18 years were targets of bullying at time of study (Analitis et al., 2009).

8. Bullying is about groups

9. Bystander behaviour Hawkins & Pepler (2001) Findings: Peers present in 88% of bullying episodes Peers intervened in 19% of all episodes 57% of interventions effective Effectiveness not related to the nature of the intervention.

10. Bystander behaviour Other children witness bullying episodes. Worryingly, according to Rivers et al. (2010) witnessing bullying can have a detrimental impact on well-being. Important to consider peer relationships at the group level

11. Rules of friendship groups Peer group norms of inclusion and exclusion are felt from age seven years Children learn that abiding by the “rules” ensures they will be accepted by the group Mixing children with different behavioural traits can lead to deviancy training

12. group norms study Ninety children (aged 10-11 years) are allocated to one of three groups at random: e.g., Jenny’s group, Pete’s group, etc.. They read a story in which a member of one of these groups, supported by other group members, bullies a person from one of the other groups. They respond to questions about the story posed in a questionnaire. Group Norm of Bullying Group: To be kind or unkind to others

13. Group norms study Jenny’s group were looking at something together over Jenny’s shoulder as they walked; all three of them. They all laughed. Debbie’s phone beeped: a text message. She fished it out of her bag, and read the message; How r u, Debbie? Who cares? U r such a loser! It was from Jenny and her group. Debbie wiped away a tear, and put her phone away quickly. She had hoped things would be alright tonight. Shakily, she said good-bye to the others, pushed open her garden gate, and let herself into the empty house. She started to cry to herself. Describes groups walking home from school Highlights the norm of bullying group (kind or unkind to others)

14. Group norms: Is bullying mean?

15. Friendship group identification Ingroup identification enhances children’s reactions. Intergroup emotions are (generally) experienced more keenly by those who are highly identified with a group.

16. Pride in group bullying

17. anger in group bullying

18. Why do group emotions matter? Group-Based Pride Affiliating with the perpetrator’s group 0.52* Telling an adult Group-Based Anger 0.58*

19. implications • Peer group memberships have an important bearing on what children feel, and these feelings are linked to what children think they would do in response to bullying. • Asking children why they might experience a sense of pride if they were part of a peer group engaging in bullying, and how best to act (or not act) upon this feeling. • Effective intervention might therefore involve encouraging children to question peer group norms that condone treating other children badly • Provides a theoretical and empirical foundation for peer support interventions, by invoking the role of group-based emotions

20. (Real) GROUPS AND bullying Within 51 cases reported to us, there were 23 cases where a single target was bullied by a group of children, but the target was then supported by other children. I discovered that a group of girls in my class were bullying one particular child ... there were about 7 or 8 involved altogether (P30, 10-11 years). Children (friends of the bullied) approached me and told me about what had happened, giving me names of the bullies, also of other children who could corroborate their story.[ ....] they had not approached any other teachers or informed their parents (P 19, 11-13 years)

21. Defenders Defenders are those children who “take sides with the victims, comforting and supporting them” Defenders tend to: be emotionally stable be cognitively skilled be empathic have high self-efficacy High levels of defending behaviour under conditions of high perceived peer pressure, even when personal responsibility for intervening was low.

22. Social networks Social network research has shown that defenders are well-liked and popular among their peers.

23. Esrc humour and bullying project Sample of 1 234 UK children, aged 11-13 years. Data were collected at two time points – Autumn and Summer Terms. Children completed peer nominations of peer victimization.

24. ESRC HUMOUR AND BULLYING PROJECT Children were asked to nominate a best friend, and their friends, in the class. They were asked to give each classmate a rating from 1 “dislike very much”, to 5 “like very much”.

25. Identifying friendship Groups A group is defined as a set of children (N ≥2) each of whom reciprocally nominates at least two others in the group as a friend or best friend, and reciprocally gives at least one of those a friendship rating of 5 (“like very much”).

26. hypotheses We thought that having defenders in the friendship group, and having children with multiple friendship group associations in the friendship group, would be negatively related over time to the levels of peer victimization. We controlled for the effects of gender, peer acceptance, and class size. Multiple Group Associations of Friends Peer Victimization at Time 1 Peer Victimization at Time 2 Defenders in Friendship Groups

27. LONGITUDINAL DATA analyses ß=-.155, t =-3.86, p<.001.

28. Humour and bullying Four dimensions: Self-enhancing (e.g. ‘My humorous outlook on life keeps me from getting too upset or depressed about things’). Aggressive (e.g. ‘If someone makes a mistake I often tease them about it’) Affiliative(e.g. ‘I enjoy making people laugh’) Self-defeating (e.g. ‘I often try to make people like me or accept me more by saying something funny about my own weaknesses, blunders or faults

29. Humour and bullying Links between humour and social competence Children who are bullied at a disadvantage with respect to the development of humour competence. Gravitate to self-defeating humour Self-defeating humour as a risk factor for victimisation

30. Can you laugh bullying off? Self-defeating humour Victimisation Maladjustment Affiliative humour

31. Implications • Friendships, groups, and humour can be a force for good. • The reduction in peer victimization as a function of the number of defenders and ‘networked’ children in a child’s friendship group emphasizes the need to investigate bullying as a group phenomenon at the level of the friendship groupin real friendship groups. • Humour is a social skill that may be focused on to help reduce bullying.

32. summary Group processes are pertinent to the maintenance and resistance of bullying. In their responses to bullying, children take account of the norms of a perpetrating group, and are influenced by ingroup identification. Successful anti-bullying interventions demand an appreciation not only of the group-level nature of bullying, and the involvement of bystanders, but also of the group processes by which children (a) come to be involved in bullying in the first place, and (b) are motivated or empowered to resist it.

33. summary . Having more defenders in one’s friendship group, and having children in one’s friendship group who are networked across multiple friendship groups, reduces peer victimization across a nine month period. We now need to better understand the friendship group concerns  of (a) defenders, and (b) those who belong to multiple friendship groups, as a basis for developing anti-bullying interventions encouraging intragroup defending of victims.

34. acknowledgements Claire Fox Simon Hunter Keele Research Team Jon Kennedy Susan Pratley All the children who took part, and the schools and parents who allowed them to do so Siân Jones sianjones@brookes.ac.uk @SianOxBrookes #PITPfriendslikethese http://throughtheacademiclookingglass.wordpress.com

35. correlations *p < .05; **p < .01, ***p < .001.