Open AccessInconsistent Definitions of Bullying: A Need to Examine People’s Judgments and Reasoning about Bullying and Cyberbullying
Author(s) -
Viviane Chang
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
human development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.232
H-Index - 60
eISSN - 1423-0054
pISSN - 0018-716X
DOI - 10.1159/000516838
Subject(s) - conceptualization , harm , psychology , aggression , social psychology , poison control , human factors and ergonomics , power (physics) , medicine , physics , environmental health , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , computer science
Despite decades of research efforts, researchers have yet to reach a consensus on the definition of bullying. There are ambiguities around the conceptualization of bullying relating to the intent, harm, repetitions of an act, and power disparity in episodes of bullying. Practically, the lack of differentiation between bullying and playful teasing as well as between bullying and other types of aggression has made it difficult to accurately measure bullying and derive the prevalence rate. There has been scant attention to how people evaluate an intent, harm, repetitions of an act, and power disparity between bullies and targets. If bullying is a moral issue, it involves people’s moral judgments and cannot be understood solely by empirical descriptions of the behavior. In this paper, I considered how social domain theory can be applied to help understand people’s judgments about bullying behaviors, which, in turn, is helpful in improving our conceptualization of bullying.