scholarly journals Navigating the Healthy Context Paradox: Identifying Classroom Characteristics that Improve the Psychological Adjustment of Bullying Victims

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (11) ◽  
pp. 2203-2213
Author(s):  
Hye-Young Yun ◽  
Jaana Juvonen
Keyword(s):  
Depressive Symptoms ◽  
Psychological Adjustment ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Bullying Interventions ◽  
Victims Of Bullying ◽  
Defending Behaviors ◽  
Classroom Level

Abstract The healthy context paradox—an unexpected pattern in which victims’ psychological adjustment worsens as the overall level of victimization in a classroom or school declines—implies that reducing the frequency of bullying or victimization incidents does not do enough to help victims of bullying. In light of this finding, it is imperative to identify protective factors that alleviate victimization-related distress in the peer ecology. The current study examines classroom-level peer victimization and peer-defending behaviors as moderators of the association between individual-level victimization and psychological adjustment. These classroom-level moderators were tested with a sample of 1373 adolescents (40% girls, Mage: 14 years) from 54 classrooms in South Korean middle schools. Consistent with past findings documenting the healthy context paradox, the results of multilevel modeling indicated that victimized youth experienced a lower level of depressive symptoms in classrooms where victimization was more common. Most importantly, bullied students reported fewer depressive symptoms, on average, in classrooms with relatively high levels of bully-oriented (i.e., confronting the bully), rather than victim-oriented (i.e., comforting the victim), defending behavior. These findings provide a more nuanced understanding of the role of peers’ defending behaviors toward bullied adolescents and have significant implications for anti-bullying interventions.

Citizens and Political Sophistication

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrik Oscarsson ◽  
Lauri Rapeli
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Sophistication ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Changes Over Time

Political sophistication refers to the role of expertise and the use of information in the forming of political judgments. Citizens in a democracy need a sufficient level of political sophistication to make sense of politics and to hold office holders accountable. Most people do not seem to be as sophisticated as theory would expect, and political sophistication also seems to be very unevenly spread among individuals. The consequences for democratic governance continue to be a matter of much scholarly debate. Although most researchers agree that sophistication among citizens tends to be low, many issues in the research field are deeply contested. First, several concepts such as awareness, sophistication, and knowledge are used more or less interchangeably in analyses of the political competence of citizens. It is, however, unclear whether the terminology conceals essential conceptual differences. Second, the empirical strategy of using surveys to measure sophistication has been heavily criticized. For some, the survey is an unsuitable method because it measures the respondents’ ability to produce correct answers under suboptimal conditions, rather than measuring what they actually know about politics. For others, the survey questions themselves are an inadequate measure of sophistication. Third, it is not clear what the effects of citizens’ political sophistication or lack thereof are on democratic governance. According to one group of scholars, the aggregated opinions and electoral choices of democratic publics would not look very different even if they were more sophisticated. The opponents of this low-information rationality theorem claim that increases in citizens’ sophistication would lead to substantial differences in democratic output. In other words, perceptions of the significance of sophistication for democracy deeply divide scholars working in the field. There is less disagreement concerning the individual-level determinants of sophistication. Although being male, well educated, and in a socially advantaged position still stand out as the strongest predictors of high sophistication, recent findings provide a more nuanced understanding of how sophistication is distributed among citizens. In addition to many enduring disputes, some questions remain largely unanswered. Without cross-nationally standardized survey items, scholars have struggled to conduct comparative studies of political sophistication. Therefore, role of political institutions as facilitators of political sophistication is to some extent uncertain. Whether and how sophistication changes over time are equally important, but mostly unexplored, questions.

The role of culture in relational aggression: Associations with social-psychological adjustment problems in Japanese and US school-aged children

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 354-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoshito Kawabata ◽  
Nicki. R. Crick ◽  
Yoshikazu Hamaguchi
Keyword(s):  
Depressive Symptoms ◽  
Relational Aggression ◽  
Psychological Adjustment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Japanese Children ◽  
Adjustment Problems ◽  
School Aged Children ◽  
Us Children

The purpose of this study was (1) to evaluate psychometric properties that assess forms of aggression (i.e., relational and physical aggression) across cultures (i.e., Japan and the United States) and (2) to investigate the role of culture in the associations between forms of aggression and social-psychological adjustment problems such as depressive symptoms and delinquency. Participants consisted of 296 fourth-graders (197 Japanese and 99 US children). It was hypothesized that relative to US children, relational aggression would be more strongly associated with depressive symptoms for Japanese children. Findings supported our hypothesis, suggesting that Japanese children may be more vulnerable to negative interpersonal experiences, including relational aggression.

Does Socio-structural Context Matter? A Multilevel Test of Sexual Minority Stigma and Depressive Symptoms in Four Asia-Pacific Countries

2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 416-433
Author(s):  
Stephanie Spaid Miedema ◽  
Regine Haardörfer ◽  
Corey L. M. Keyes ◽  
Kathryn M. Yount
Keyword(s):  
Depressive Symptoms ◽  
Sexual Minority ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Sexual Minority Men ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Sexual Stigma ◽  
Minority Men ◽  
Cluster Unit

In the Asia-Pacific region, individual sexual stigma contributes to elevated rates of depression among sexual minority men. Less well understood is the role of socio-structural sexual stigma despite evidence that social context influences the experience of stigma. We use data from the United Nations Multi-country Study on Men and Violence to conduct a multilevel test of associations between individual- and cluster unit–level indicators of sexual stigma and depressive symptoms among sexual minority men ( n = 562). In the full model, individual-level sexual stigma is not associated with depressive symptoms, although there is significant variation in the association between individual stigma and depressive symptoms across clusters. Contrary to expectation, at the community level, homophobic injunctive norms are negatively associated with depressive symptoms. We discuss the implications for policies, programs, and future research to improve mental health among sexual minority men in the region.

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