Prejudicial Ethnic Bullying: The Role of Individual and Contextual Factors

The present dissertation aims to investigate prejudicial ethnic bullying in adolescence and shed light on the role of individual and contextual factors associated with it. Despite much evidence of the psychological benefits of diversity (Mok et al., 2007), highly diverse environments also expose minority youth to heightened risks of experiencing social exclusion and discrimination (Baysu et al., 2014; Rutland & Killen, 2015). Thus, some minority adolescents show problems “fitting” with their ethnically diverse peer group, and may experience peer rejection and discriminatory episodes towards them (Celeste et al., 2016). Bullying is an intentional, deliberate, and repetitive behaviour initiated by aggressive children and adolescents towards their weaker peers (Smith, 2016). Among different forms of bullying, the experience of ethnic harassment (i.e., negative treatments or derogatory comments about one’s ethnic background) is one of the major contextual stressors for immigrant youth (Coll et al., 1996). In a more and more multi-ethnic society, the rates of ethnic bullying raise concerns on how to create an inclusive environment. Ethnic bullying is defined as a form of bullying perpetrated against members of ethnic minority groups (Elamé, 2013). A number of studies have shown that young people victimize or harass their peers in school in light of their ethnic background (Durkin et al., 2012; Larochette et al., 2010; Monks et al., 2008; Strohmeier et al., 2011) and as a consequence of their negative attitudes toward immigrants (Bayram Özdemir et al., 2016). The importance of the topic is crucial, especially in this historical period where ethnic diversity is increasing and the consciousness concerning ethnic minorities’ is gaining political and media attention in Europe. 6 Adopting a socio-ecological perspective in considering these dynamics, the external environment, together with individual characteristics, contributes in large part into acquiring and maintaining negative attitudes towards people with different ethnicity. For these reasons, the general aim of the present dissertation is to deepen the knowledge on prejudicial ethnic bullying and its association with individual and contextual factors. Three studies are presented: 1) a systematic review and meta-analysis on the association between negative attitudes towards ethnic minorities and ethnic bullying; 2) a cross-sectional, multilevel study about the impact of prejudice in the proximate socio-ecological contexts (i.e., family and school) on ethnic bullying; 3) a three waves longitudinal study on individual factors that can directly or indirectly youth’s engagement in ethnic bullying. In the first study (Chapter 1- systematic review and meta-analysis) the search was done following the PRISMA guidelines at the beginning of June 2022 in the SCOPUS, Web of Science and ERIC scientific databases. We identified 64407 records and after screening for duplicates, inclusion criteria and quality assessment a final set of 10 papers were selected for the systematic review. The number of included articles suggests a dearth in literature in the topic of attitudes towards ethnic minorities and the dimension of ethnic bullying. Nevertheless, results from the qualitative analysis confirmed that researchers have been interested of the topic, especially in relation to school years. Most of research came from the European context where the attention was mainly given to secondary school students. A mixed model meta-analysis was then carried out with 22 assessments belonging to 9 articles. Results showed the important role of attitudes in the explanation of the behaviour among young people. Specifically, an overall significant association between negative attitudes against ethnic minorities and ethnic bullying emerged. Additional analysis on the role of possible moderators in such relation, revealed a non-statistically significant 7 difference between the level of negative attitudes towards ethnic minorities coming from the individual or the context (peer influences both in formal and informal contexts). Thus, both levels of attitudes played an important role in youth’s involvement in ethnic bullying. In the second study (Chapter 2), it was analysed the impact of prejudice in the proximal socio-ecological contexts on ethnic bullying. Specifically, we aimed to investigate whether a tolerant classroom context (i.e., teachers and classmates’ attitudes) could buffer the impact of parents’ prejudice on adolescents’ ethnic bullying. Participants were 582 students (Mage = 15.23; SD = .65; 50.9% females; 30.7% with immigrant background) and 72 teachers (aged between 27 and 65 years; 79% females) that belonged to 37 secondary school’s classrooms. Multi-informant reports were used with both adolescents and their class- teachers. Besides, students were also asked to assess their parents’ attitudes towards ethnic minorities. Results of a multi-level regression analysis showed that teachers’ tolerance moderated the effect of parents’ prejudice on youth’s engagement in ethnic bullying. In particular, we found that in classes with low levels of teachers’ tolerance, parents’ prejudice was significantly related with ethnic bullying. Conversely, in classes with high levels of teachers’ tolerance, parental prejudice was no longer a risk factor for the engagement in ethnic bullying. In the third study (Chapter 3), it was examined the role of individual characteristics that can predict ethnic bullying. Specifically, the study aimed at analyzing the reciprocal and longitudinal association between youths’ prejudice, ethnocultural empathy and ethnic bullying during the first two years of high school. The analysis included 666 Italian high school students (Mage=15.13; SD = .53; 44.6% females) belonging to 36 classrooms of 10 secondary schools, who participated in at least one of three time points of data collection. Results from a Cross-Lagged Panel Model showed that the effect of prejudice on ethnic bullying was fully mediated by 8 ethnocultural empathy (β = .054; SE = .021; p = .009). Besides, according to previous literature (Bem, 1972), ethnic bullying resulted predicting both prejudice and ethnocultural empathy over time. The final chapter (Chapter 4) presents a general discussion of the main results of the three studies, highlighting their contributions to the literature on prejudice-based ethnic bullying, strengths, limitations, and the implications for future prevention interventions.