• DOI:10.1348/000709909X479105
• Corpus ID: 33974893

The association between adolescents' beliefs in a just world and their attitudes to victims of bullying.

@article{Fox2010TheAB,
  title={The association between adolescents' beliefs in a just world and their attitudes to victims of bullying.},
  author={Claire Louise Fox and Tracey J. Elder and Josephine Gater and Elizabeth Johnson},
  journal={The British journal of educational psychology},
  year={2010},
  volume={80 Pt 2},
  pages={
          183-98
        }
}

• C. Fox, T. Elder, +1 author Elizabeth Johnson
• Published 1 June 2010
• Psychology
• The British journal of educational psychology

BACKGROUND
Research which has investigated children's attitudes to bullying has found that the majority of children display anti-bullying attitudes. However, a small minority of children do appear to admire the bully and lack sympathy for victims of bullying. The just world belief theory has received a great deal of attention in recent years with evidence emerging in support of a two-dimensional model distinguishing between beliefs in a just world (BJW) for self and BJW for others. BJW-self (and not BJW-others) has been found to uniquely predict psychological well-being, whereas BJW-others (and not BJW-self) uniquely predicts harsh social attitudes and derogation of victims.

AIM
The aim of the present study was to measure BJW-self and others in a sample of UK secondary schoolchildren and to see whether BJW-others can account for adolescents' negative attitudes towards victims of bullying.

SAMPLE
In total, 346 pupils aged 11-16 years of age (270 males, 76 females) from two schools took part in the study.

METHODS
The participants completed measures of BJW-self and others, attitudes to victims of bullying, empathy, and self-esteem on a whole class basis.

RESULTS
It was found that BJW-others uniquely predicted adolescents' attitudes to victims but in the opposite direction to that which was predicted - high BJW were associated with stronger anti-bullying attitudes. As predicted, BJW-self (but not BJW-others) was positively and uniquely correlated with self-esteem.

CONCLUSION
The findings are discussed in the context of research which has found that the direction of the relationship between BJW-others and derogation of victims appears to depend on the nature of the injustice, with people with strong BJW less tolerant of severe injustices.