SOLID

Bullying is a pervasive problem among school-aged youth, with disastrous effects on victims’ psychological functioning: many victims suffer from depressive symptoms, loneliness, social anxiety, and low self-esteem. The recognition that bullying is a group process has led interventions to promote peer defending (e.g., standing up against bullies, consoling victims) in the hope that it stops bullying and improves victims’ psychological adjustment. But is this the case? Only few studies have examined whether victims actually profit from being defended, and alarming findings have emerged in more than half of these studies: being defended was ineffective, or even provoked more bullying and worsened victims’ psychological adjustment. These counterintuitive findings pose a significant puzzle: why do victims often not benefit from being defended? Do anti-bullying interventions currently include strategies (promoting peer defending) that have adverse effects on victims? The field urgently needs insights into whether and how peer defending can effectively decrease bullying and promote victims’ psychological adjustment. I have recently theorized and provided evidence showing that being defended has the potential to benefit victims. The overall aim of the current research project is to identify Success factors that Optimize the Longitudinal Impact of Defending (SOLID) on decreasing bullying and improving victims’ psychological adjustment. It is hypothesized, amongst others, that the effectiveness of defending is explained by victims’ social cognitions (e.g., learned helplessness, self-blame), and depends upon defenders’ characteristics (e.g., popularity), victims’ characteristics (e.g., self-confidence), and classroom factors (e.g., anti-bullying norms). SOLID will be the first-ever project that considers these factors in a longitudinal design (n=6,000 Finnish students; 11-13 years of age). SOLID will combine questionnaire data with daily diary data to gain more ecologically valid insights into the effectiveness of defending, both on the longer and shorter term. Defending will not only be seen as a “characteristic” (victims can either be defended or not) but also as a network (victims can send out “defending ties” to their defenders), using state-of-the-art social network analyses. In this way, SOLID will advance a ground-breaking theoretical model of the effects of peer defending on victims, which will be translated into urgently needed practical guidelines for anti-bullying programs.