Bullies and victims: Their ego picture, ideal ego picture and ...

ScandinavianJournal of Psycltology, 1982,23, 307-313

Bullies and victims: Their ego picture, ideal ego picture and normative ego picture r.q.lsrORrevrsr KERSTIN EKMAN KIRSTI LAGERSPETZ

Abo Akttdemi, Finlund

Bjtirkqvist,K., Ekman,K. & Lagerspetz, K. M. J.: Bulriesand victims:Theiregopicture, ideal ego picture and normativeego picture.ScandinavianJournal of esychology, 19g2, 23, 307-313. The ego picture, ideal ego picture and normativeego picture of bullies and their victims in a school situationwere measuredwith semanticdifferentials.The bullies considered themselves to be dominant,had high idealsconcerningdominanceand thoughtthis was what the social norms require. They felt themselvesto be impulsiveand lacling in selfcontrol' The victims consideredthemselvesto be depressed,lacking in intelligenceand personalattractiveness,and displayed in general feelings of inferiority. These characteristicscan be partly a causeand partly an effect ofthe bullying situaiion. Girls scored in generallower than boys on socially valued characteristicsand higher on socially undesirableones. K. Bjt)rkqvist, Departmen! of psychorogv, Abo Akademi, vdrdbergsg. r, sF-20700 Abo 70, Finland.

Studieson "mobbing" or bullyingin schoolshave earlierbeenconductedby, e.g.,Lowenstein(1977), Olweus(1978)and Lagerspetz et al. 0982).Typically, it is a stablephenomenon with the sameindividualsappearingas bulliesand victimsduringlonger periods of time. Bullying occurs among girls as well as among boys, though it is more common among the latter. A short summary of research completedin this areawas presented by Lagerspetz et al.(1982). It has been establishedin earlier research(Olweus,1978;Lagerspetz et al., l9g2)that individuals who are bullies typically have certain common personalityfeatures,and the sameis the casefor individualswho are victims. We view bullyingas a specialcaseof aggression, which is socialto its nature. It appearsonly in relativelysmall social groups(suchas schoolclassesor army units),the membersof which seeeachother regularly,usually daily. Thus, the victim has no possibilityto avoidhis tormentors.The easyvictories,and often supportfrom other group members,encouragethe bully to further aggressive activities.In that wav.

certainbehaviouralpatternsget establishedin the group. The purposeof this study was to cast further light on what is specificfor bullies and victims when comparedwith averagepupils. The present investigationfocuses upon their view of themselves, on how it differs from how they would like to be, and from how they feel that the social normsrequirethem to be. This was doneby studying their ego picture, ideal ego picture, and normative ego picture. It was felt that the information thus gainedcould attributeto our understanding of what it is that makes the bully a bully, and the victim a victim. The methodis adaptedfrom Rauste /1973\. The term egois not usedherein a Freudiansense (Freud 1917).Rather,it is understoodin terms of socialpsychology,much in the way Rogers(1973) explainsit. He considersthe ego of a humanbeing to be a social product developedin interpersonal relations,and strivingfor innerconsistence. Every person has a need for a positive ego picture and is strivingfor it. Scandinauian Journal of Psychology,

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The ego pictureis thus seenas a productof the individual'sinteractionswith other people.Mead (1967)claimsthat certain"significantorhers"play a greaterrole thanother peoplein the environment in the creationof this egopicture.Thesesignificant othersvary with age.Whenthe individualmatures, a "generalizedother" will replacethe significant others.This generalizedother representsgeneral and more abstractdemandsfrom othersand from society. Rogers( 1973)claimsthat besidesthe egopicture, an idealego picturedevelops.This consistsof all the thingsthe individualwould like to be. Rauste(1973)describesa third type of ego picture, which she calls the normativeego picture. This pictureis formed in the individualaccording to how he experiences the ways in which people in his surroundings are trying to changehim acc o r d i n gt o t h e i r n o r m s ,i . e . , h o w t h e y w a n t h i m to be. (Althoughonly the pronoun "he" is used here,it is ofcoursemeantto traverseto bothsexes.) Rauste(1973,19'74) used the ego picture,ideal ego pictureand normativeego picturefor measuring her subjects'self-esteemand subjectivesocial .r,rccers. The distancebetweenthe ego pictureand the idealego picturewas by her consideredto be a measureof an individual'sself-esteem; the discrepancybetweenhow he experiences himself,and how he wantsto be. AlreadyWilliam James0890) considered a person'sself-esteem to be the relation betweenhis actualsuccessand his ambition.This is a principlesimilarto Rauste's.In a similarway, thedistancebetweenthe egopictureandthe normative ego picturecan be seenas a measureof a person's subjective social success;the difference between how an individual experienceshimself and how he experiencesthat other peopleexpect him to be (Rauste, 1973, 1974).We have, however, refrainedfrom consideringthe distancesbetween the different types of ego pictures as fully validmeasures of self-esteem and subjectivesocial success.Scoringhigh on items in the ego picture test adtuallyimplies alreadythat a person has a high self-esteem, or valueshimself highly on the qualityin question. Aggressiveness hasoftenbeenseenas a reaction to frustratingsocialrelations.This view has been supported by researchresultsas well. For instance, youngsters aggressive are usuallyunpopularamong their peers,and their schoolachievementis poor (Huesmann, Lagerspetz and Eron, in press).LagerScandinauian Journal of Psychology, 23

Table l. The number oJ' pupils ruted us bullies or victims by their peers Boys Buflies Victims Total

20 (9.6%) 12 (5.7Vo') 32 (15.3%)

Cirls 7 (3.2%) 6 ( 2 . ' 7V o \ t3 (5.9Vo)

Total 27 (6.3%) 18 (4.27a) 45 (10.5%)

spetzet al. (1982)found that the bullieshad negative attitudesto peers and teachers,experienced their peerrelationsnegatively,and were unpopular amongtheir peers. However,beinga bully in a mobbingsocialgroup requiresa certain amount of self-confidence. The bullies also probably seek self-confidenceand peers' approval through their bullying behavior. Olweus (1978)found that the bullies did not feel unsuccessful but had a positiveview of themselves. The bullies in Olweus' study were also not very unpopularamongtheir peers. The victims,on the otherhand,havein all studies beenfound to be insecurein their socialrelations. For instance,Lagerspetzet al. (1982)found them to be subjectively maladjustedand to have a low self-esteem. Accordingly we expectedthe victims to score lower in the ego picturethan both bulliesand controls on positivelyvalued qualitiesand higher on qualitiesthat are negativelyvaluedin the society. The bullieswe expectedto scorehigherin the ego picturethan the victims, and about as high as the controlson positivelyvalued qualities,and lower on the negativelyvalued qualities.But, knowing that they have aggressive tendencies, we expected them to scorehigh on variablesmeasuringlack of selfcontrol,suchas impulsiveness. As regardsthe ego picturein relationto the ideal and the normative ego picture, we expectedall three groups (bullies, victims, and controls) to scorelower on positivelyvaluedcharacteristics and higher on negatively valued ones. This implies for instancethat they would like to be more intelligent than they are, and further, that they think that the socialnormsrequirethemto be more intelligent than they feel to be. Regardingnegative qualities,such as depression,the situationwould be the reverse,the ego picturegivinghigherscores thanthe normativeand idealegopictures. In that way, a feelingof not beingfully able to

Bullies and victims

live up to one's own idealsand subjectivelyfelt 1 5 socialnorms would be reflectedamongall groups in the data. However, the greatestdistancesbetweenthe ego pictureand the idealand normative ego picturesrespectivelywas expectedamongthe 10 victims. That would reflect the greatestfeelings personal them. and of failure among of insufficience

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Procedure The three ego pictureswere all measuredwith the same instrument, a five point semantic differential with 2l bipolar adjectiveor sentencepairs (Osgoodet al. 1958). This method has often been used in researchof similar types but concerningthe normative ego picture it has only beenusedby Rauste(1973).Throughfactoranalysis, she found seven factors, which we used as a model in this research.These seven factors or dimensionswere: intelligence,dominance, dominoted by feelings, perseverance,depression,impulsivenessandpersonal attractiveness.Each factor was measuredby meansof three items. The factors had by Rauste (1973)been found to have a reliability that at an averagewas roughly over "dom0.70,the highest0.89. For instance,for the factor pairs were: inatedby feelings",the adjectiveor sentence "(l) I am ... an emotional/a matter-of-factperson; (2) I let . . . my feelingsrule my behaviour/myintelligence rule my behaviour;(3) I ... daydreama lot/stickto reality." Filling in the semanticdifferentialfor the ego picture, "How am I?" the Ss were askedto answerthe question: picture, differential the same semantic For the ideal ego "I/ox, was used, but the questionwas now formulated: would I like to be?" For the normativeego picture. the question was: "How should I be according to others?" In each case, more detailed explanationswere orally givento avoid misunderstandings. The forms for the peer ratingsand the three identical ego picture tests were all distributedand filled in during a normal schoollesson(45 min). Stutisticul anulysis In the analysis,the three groups were comparedon the seven variablesin the ego picture tests. Boys and girls

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METHOD 430pupils,agedlzt-16yearsfrom threedifferentschools, served as the researchpopulation.6.'7Voof these were eitherabsentor had to be excludeddue to incompletely The total number of subjectsinfilled questionnaires. cluded in the study was thus 401, of which 197 were boys and 204 girls. 230 or 5'l.4Va of the subjects(all from one school) had been studied one year earlier by et al. (1982). Lagerspetz A group of bulliesand a group of victims were selected on the basis of peer ratings. The method was the same et al. (1982).A controlgroup as describedby Lagerspetz of 55 girls and 55 boys was randomly chosenamongthe restof the pupils.

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Fig. /. The ego picture (O), ideal ego picture(A)' and normativeego picture (l) for bullies(B)' controls(C)' and victims (V) of both sexes,on the variableinrelligence. The variable is combined of three items. The highest possiblescoreis 15, and the theoreticalmean:9. Long distancesbetweenthe differenttypes of ego picture imply great discrepanciesbetween subjectively experienced reality, ideals, and norms, and indicate conflict in this areaof the personality.

were comparedseparately.A one-way analysisof variance was used, parallel with Kruskal-Wallis'one factor analysisof variance.For all groups,a 0.05-levelof significance was chosen. When significant variances were found, the groups were further compared one-to-one with two-tailedr-tests. RESULTS About l0Vo of the pupils were rated as bullies and victims. There were slightly more bullies than victims, and almost three times as many boys as girls were chosen. The exact proportions are presented in Table l. When the peer ratings of this year were compared with the peer ratings one year earlier, there was a high agreement between the two. In percentage, the agreement was 95'3Vo. This indicates that bullying is a stable phenomenon from one year to another (Olweus, 1978)and it can also be seen as a measure of test-retest reliability. The results of the three ego picture tests are presented graphically in Figs. l-7. The graphic form was chosen since it better than a table can illustrate the relations between the ego, ideal ego, and normative ego pictures. For the sake of simplicity, F- and .F1-valuesare excluded, and only significant/-values are included in the text. ScandinauiunJournal of Psychology, 23

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Fig.2. The ego,idealego,and normative egopicture Fig. 3. The ego, ideal ego, and normative ego picture for bullies.controlsand victimsof both sexeson the f o r b u l l i e s . c o n t r o l s a n d v i c t i m s o f b o t h s e x e s o n t h e Thesymbols variable arethesamein Fig.l. variable domindted byfeelings. The symbols are the same dominance. arein thetext. 4! !r f!9, 1, _ElplqlqtlqqC

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As can be seenfrom Fig. l, the victims of both sexespicturedthemselvesas less intelligentthan both the bullies and the controls did. This was true for boys as well as for girls, and it was significant at the 001-level(t-valuesrangingfrom 4.736 to 4.953).It is also worthy of note that the bullies experienced highersocialdemands(scoredhigher in their normativeego picture)than the other childrendid.

On this variable,there were no great differences betweenthe groups, althoughthe bullies of both sexes scored somewhat higher than the other groups. Between the sexes, on the other hand, there was a general difference(Controls: Boys vs. girls,t (108):4.972,p