Copyright Malvin Porter, Jr. 2010 - acumen - The University of ...

Schwartz et al., 1998). These children are less socially accepted by their peers are more isolated
than other children (Veenstra et al., 2005), which means that they favor prosocial behavior as a
means to garner social support as a buffer from the harmful effects of peer victimization
(Malecki & Demaray, 2004). In the context of schools, peers and teachers are the core part of a
child’s social support network providing emotional, motivational, instrumental, and
informational support (Tardy, 1985).
In contrast, while children in this study were much less likely to select Aggressive
Actions than Prosocial Actions regardless of whether the Story Form of Victimization was
physical or relational. However, children were more likely to they Aggressive Action Choices
when the story form of victimization was relational than when the story form of victimization
was physical. With relational victimization, children may not fear a bully’s retaliation because
neither victims nor bystanders incur a physical threat to their personal safety. Interestingly, as
previously mentioned in the gender portion of this study, girls are more predisposed to resolving
relational disputes through the use of strong social support networks. Even so, Olweus (1978)
reported that bullies are rarely targeted by peers, which may suggest that even relational bullies
have an inhibitory effect on victims for fear of psychological harm. Alternately, when children in
this study do resort to Aggressive Actions, it may be that boys tend to resort to physical
aggression and girls may resort to relational aggression respectively.
With regard to Justification Choices for physical and relational forms of victimization,
children tended to predominantly select more Justice/Fair Justification Choices with
Prosocial/Care Justifications as a close second in both Physical and Relational Story Forms of
Victimization. Murray-Close and associates (2006) argue that children tend to adopt a moral
orientation (e.g., ability to distinguish behaviors that are acceptable as right and wrong) about
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