Bullying might be something that we believe to be wrong in all circumstances, but new research from North Carolina State University reminds us that this isn’t always the case.  The research examines bullying among adolescents and finds that non-immigrant youngsters are more accepting of bullying when the victim is an immigrant.

“We know that bystanders can play a key role in stopping bullying, and wanted to better understand bystander responses to bias-based bullying,” the researchers say. “What role does a victim’s background play? What role does the bystander’s background play? Are children more or less likely to intervene if they come from different backgrounds?”

Accepting bullying

The researchers recruited nearly 200 children from the sixth and ninth grades, with 79 of them of immigrant origin.  The volunteers were asked to read three different scenarios before answering a number of questions asking what they thought of the interactions in each scenario and how they might respond to them.

The first of these scenarios saw a non-immigrant child socially bullying an immigrant child on account of their immigrant status.  This was changed slightly in the second scenario such that the bully was targeting a non-immigrant child for being shy, with the third scenario replacing the non-immigrant child with an immigrant.

“In general, the kids thought bullying was not acceptable,” the researchers say. “But non-immigrant youth thought bullying immigrant peers was more acceptable than bullying of other non-immigrant peers. Immigrant origin youth thought bullying any of the kids was equally wrong.”

Getting to know

The situation began to change when the non-immigrant children got to know the immigrant child.  The more contact the children had, the less accepting they were of bullying, and the more likely they would be to intervene if they saw any.

“We also found that children who scored higher on ‘Theory of Mind’ were more likely to intervene,” the researchers say. “Theory of Mind is an important part of understanding other people’s perspectives, so we suspect this is likely tied to a child’s ability to place themselves in the victim’s shoes.”

The researchers believe that their work is useful in helping society to develop more effective interventions against bullying.  For instance, they suggest that encouraging more positive interactions between groups could go a long way towards helping children understand the harm caused by bullying.