Narrative strategies in bullies and victims in Italian schools

It is hypothesised that bullies and victims use different strategies to int erpret social incongruence,An Italian version of Olweus [(1991): Erlbaum] a nd Whitney and Smith's [(1993): Educational Research 35:3-25] questionnaire on bullying was employed to select 61 bullies, 40 victims, and 101 control s from a wider sample of students aged 11, 12, and 13 years. Six stories de aling with themes of social interaction between two peers were chosen as th e task of the study, These stories described an episode in which the protag onist carried out an act that violated his/her normal behaviour toward the peer. Three stories ended in negative violating acts and three ended in pos itive ones. Students were asked to try to imagine what had happened prior t o the act and how the peer would react to such an act, Dependent variables were locus of attribution of the antecedents to the protagonist or to the e nvironment; use of verbs indicating actions or mental events; and Aggressiv e, Prosocial, or Neutral reaction of the peer. Two main results were found: (1) tno main strategies of answer differentiated bullies and victims: bull ies--more frequently than victims--used a Protagonist-Mental strategy in wh ich stories were mainly completed using antecedents consisting of mental st ates of the protagonist, while victims-more frequently than bullies--used a n En Environment-Action strategy, in which stories were mainly completed us ing, as antecedents, other people's actions toward the protagonist; and (2) bullies were more similar to the control group than victims were. (C) 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc.