Comparison Of Knowledge Of Display Rules Among Different Roles Of Bullying

Background: With the process of the socialization, Bullying, a special type of aggression, becomes an anti-social behavior and a common problem in schools. Obviously, Bullying does great harm to the children's phsical and mental development. On the other hand, emotional competence plays a significant role in children's socialization and social adaptation. Related researches reported that children's pro-social behavior was positively predicted by knowledge of pro-social display rules (Garner, 1996). In terms of relation between knowledge of display rules and anti-social behavior, such as aggression, there was a trend for aggressive subjects to invoke display rules for anger less than non-aggressive subjects (Underwood, et al., 1992; Marion, 1992). The presented study tried to test the relation between children's knowledge of display rules and bullying and explore the reason and mental mechanism behind of bullying behavior by comparing children's reported knowledge of display rules among different roles of bullying.Method: Using the method of clinical interview and sociometrics, this study sought to compare children's reported knowledge of display rules among different roles of bullying. There are two studies (additional two pilots): (1) In study 1, 418 children (from 41 to 87 months) were accessed as different bullying roles by interview and sociometrics.(2) In study 2, 156(from 51 months to 86 months) children were reported their knowledge of display rules.Results: (1) Approximately 65% of preschool children involved in bullying situations, among which, 12% were reported as bullies, 18.7% were reported being victimized, 24.9% were reported as defenders and 9.6%were reported as supporters. In the group of bully, 44% children were accessed as direct bullies, 30% were relational bullies and 26% were mixture bullies. (2) Age difference not only in different roles of bullying, but in different types of bullies, and the way they bullies others as well. Regardless of different type of bullying behaviors, boys more likely bullied others than girls, thus maybe resulting in much more male bullies than female ones in any type of bullies. When it came to the use of different bullying behavior, there was a trend for boys to use more physical bullying, while girls tended to use verbal bullying. In the group of defenders and victims, there were more girls than boys. (3) Significant difference in the expression regulation knowledge among different type of bullies. Direct bullies had less expression regulation knowledge than relational bullies, who were the best ones in all of children. It showed that relational bullies were skilled in managing and controlling their emotion, especially negative emotions, but direct bullies seemed that lack recognition of masking their own negative emotions and couldn't manage their emotions well. While in other aspects of knowledge of display rules such as interpersonal support, instrumental support, interpersonal-bad-self, no significant difference was found.(4) Although these three, including defenders, relational bullies and mixture bullies, were good at regulating the expression and controlling the emotions, but defenders reported interpersonal-bad-self more likely than relational bullies. And defenders reported interpersonal-bad-other and interpersonal-bad -self more likely than mixture bullies. There was a trend for clever bullies such as mixture bullies to use display rules motivated by self-focus, but defenders considered more about others than themselves. Meanwhile, from this result, we could see however clever the bullies were, they couldn't predict negative effect to themselves that expressing emotions made as well as defenders. (5) Except for victims, there was a trend that children reported that they would manage their display of negative emotion in the presence of a peer than a teacher.Conculsions and implications: Knowledge of display rules partly reflected the different mental characteristics of different bullying roles. Rude direct bullies often bullied others maybe because of the lack of recognition of display rules. They were bad in managing their negative emotion. However, clever relational bullies had got high recognition of display rules and mastered great knowledge about it, they still bullied others maybe resulting from bad prediction of interpersonal-bad-self effect. Defenders were the best ones among all the children, their decision to not show the emotion was based on their pro-social tendencies, other-focus and positive prediction of the emotion display. Namely they believe his or her disclosure of emotional reaction would result in others experiencing unhappiness, and they wanted to avoid it. This study extended and went deeply to the field of research about children's bullying. Future researches and systematic interventions about children's bullying behavior will be proposed. The teachers will get some help from this study, for it will provide them a relatively general outlook about children's bullying and their bullying roles, which will encourage teachers to intervene children's bullying early and effectively by emotional means.