Moral orientation, bullying roles and gender differences in Italian adolescents.

Most current studies on cognitive mediators of aggression don’t take into consideration the dimension of moral concepts, and similarly, many researches in moral development don’t examine the potential association with aggressive behaviour, despite the common focus on the process of intentional and physical victimization of others (Arsenio & Lemerise, 2004; Guerra, Nucci & Huesmann, 1994). Bullying, and more in general social competence, can not be understood without reference to traditional moral issues involving fairness, other’s welfare, and refraining from harming others for personal gain (Turiel, 1998, Arsenio & Lemerise, 2001; 2004). In a debate on different theoretical approaches to aggressive behaviour Arsenio & Lemerise (2001) summarize the contrasting positions of Crick and Dodge (1999) and Sutton and Smith (1999) about the role that social skills may play in bullying behaviours. Sutton et al. (1999) suggest that the specific form of social incompetence implied “may lie in the values of the bully rather than in the accuracy of the cognitions”. According to this position, the behavioural incompetence in bullying consists of either ignoring or rejecting one’s own moral knowledge and values about fairness and reciprocity, and deliberately using aggression in order to obtain material goals at the expenses of others. The issue of how the behavioural choices are associated to general social goals can have many important implications in addressing how non-aggressive children differ from proactive aggressive ones in terms of social reasoning. Proactive aggression is associated with favouring instrumental goals (“I want this …”) over more relational goals (“I want to be his friend”) (cfr. Crick & Dodge, 1996). The greater focus of non aggressive children on relational dimensions suggests that these children are more concerned about how their behaviour affects others. In Italy few studies focused on the association between aggressive behaviour and the moral orientation of young children and adolescent (Menesini, et al., in Fonzi, 1999). Our study aims at investigating the hypothesis that proactive aggressive behaviour could be more associated with individualistic and instrumental moral orientation compared to the other roles: defenders, victims and bystanders. Our sample includes 468 boys and girls from Middle school in Bologna and 403 form the same grade (age range from 12 to 14 years) in a town in the centre of Tuscany. A questionnaire was administered in order to explore personal values about three main domains: egoistic orientation, social orientation (adhesion to social rules) and altruistic orientation, as well as the self evaluation of the bullying phenomenon in their schools. Results suggest a difference in the choice values depending on the role in bullying: bullies were oriented toward personal success and richness while victims showed an orientation for the social and altruistic set of values. Gender differences were also reported, with females indicating more social and altruistic set of values, while males choose success and personal achievement as predominant values. The results highlight the importance of considering the dimensions of moral orientation in the actors involved in the bullying process.