The Effects of Bullying

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorUniversity, Bachelor's February 2008

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Across many different cultures peer victimization has been defined the same way and is commonly shared among young adolescents. In the United States, there has been a recent outburst in school crime, including school shootings. Studies have shown that some of these shootings have been linked to people with a history of peer abuse (Juvonen, Graham, 2001). Bullying falls into the category of peer abuse. Bullying has effects on the psychological well being of not only the bullies, but also the victims and the bully-victims, which is a combination of the both (Rigby, 2003).

According to the peer nominations report, ?significant differences appeared on all psychological adjustment indicators, with bullies reporting the lowest and victims reporting the highest levels of depression, social anxiety, and loneliness. Bully victims generally fell in between, with elevated levels of depression and loneliness but average levels of social anxiety. In turn, the victim?s usually suffer from depression, and the bully-victim can display the worst of both worlds (Juvonen, Graham, Schuster, 2003).

With these facts at hand, I will not discuss the psychological effects on the bullies, which brings me to my first point.

The first issue that I would like to discuss is the psychological effects that a bully can experience. Various studies have stated that the bully suffers from the same psychological effects as the victim does. These studies have recently been contradicted because of new studies involving peer nomination reports. These reports have been shown to be very reliable and accurate in predicting a variety of negative outcomes (Juvonen et al., 2003). In a study by Dr. Juvoven, Dr. Graham, and Dr. Schuster, of UCLA, they used the method of peer nomination reports. They relied mostly on the classmates to report the students who have ?bully? type characteristics. Each student provided a confidential...