Classroom Status Hierarchy Moderates the Association between Social Dominance Goals and Bullying Behavior in Middle Chil
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EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
Classroom Status Hierarchy Moderates the Association between Social Dominance Goals and Bullying Behavior in Middle Childhood and Early Adolescence Bin Pan1 Liang Zhang ●
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Linqin Ji1 Claire F. Garandeau2 Christina Salmivalli1,2 Wenxin Zhang1 ●
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Received: 10 April 2020 / Accepted: 1 July 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Social dominance goals represent desires to be powerful and prominent among peers. Previous studies have documented that endorsing social dominance goals is positively associated with bullying behavior. However, little is known about how classroom context moderates the social dominance goals–bullying association. The present study examined the role of classroom status hierarchy in the longitudinal association between social dominance goals and bullying in a sample of 1,603 children attending 17 grade 3 classrooms (n = 558, 46.2% girls, Mage = 9.33 years, SD = 0.44), 15 grade 4 classrooms (n = 491, 45.0% girls, Mage = 10.31 years, SD = 0.38) and 16 grade 7 classrooms (n = 554, 49.3% girls, Mage = 13.2 years, SD = 0.46) in China, followed for 1 year. Classroom peer status hierarchy was assessed by the within-classroom standard deviation in perceived popularity. Social dominance goals were obtained through self-reports. Bullying was measured via peer nomination. The multilevel models revealed that social dominance goals at Wave 1 predicted increases in bullying at Wave 2 only in classrooms with higher status hierarchies, after controlling for gender, grade, classroom size, and classroom gender distribution. These findings indicate that children who strive for social dominance goals are more likely to bully others when power is less equally distributed in the classroom. Keywords
Classroom status hierarchy Social dominance goals Bullying Multilevel analysis ●
Introduction From an evolutionary perspective (Pellegrini 2002; Salmivalli and Peets 2008), most bullying behaviors are goaloriented and motivated by a desire for social dominance, that is a desire for high status, influence, and visibility among peers. There is indeed evidence that those who endorse social dominance goals are more likely to engage in bullying behavior (Caravita and Cillessen 2012; Olthof et al. 2011; Sijtsema et al. 2009). As goals and goalconcordant behaviors could be activated and aroused by social contexts (Lindenberg 2013), it is critical to understand the role of context in the association between social
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dominance goals and bullying, defined as repeated aggression against a more vulnerable peer (Olweus 2013). Classroom status hierarchy is a possible contextual factor that moderates this association (Garandeau et al. 2011). A clear status hierarchy, which reflects strong classroom inequalities in social status, might promote bullying behavior among social dominance-oriented children by making bullying more socially rewarding and mitigating risks of physical hurt and social costs (Reijntjes et al. 2013). Using
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