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A new study from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) revealed that "cool" kids in middle school had a tendency to participate in bullying more than others.
Bullying was defined as either "starting fights or pushing other kids around" or "spreading nasty rumors about other kids." The UCLA psychology study found that bullying could help improve an individual's social status and popularity among middle school students. In addition, students who were already considered popular utilized these forms of bullying.
The researchers believe that the findings of the study, which were recently published in the online edition of the
Journal of Youth and Adolescence, could help school administrators and anti-bullying programs improve their tactics for eliminating school bullying.
"The ones who are cool bully more, and the ones who bully more are seen as cool," explained the study's lead author
Jaana Juvonen, a professor of psychology at UCLA. "What was particularly interesting was that the form of aggression, whether highly visible and clearly confrontational or not, did not matter. Pushing or shoving and gossiping worked the same for boys and girls."
In the project, the researchers observed 1,895 ethnically diverse students from 11 Los Angeles middle schools. The students were dispersed across 99 different classes, with investigators conducting surveys at the start of the seventh grade, the fall of eight grade, and the spring of eight grade. During each of the three surveys, the students filled out questionnaires asking them to name the students who were thought to be the "coolest," the students who usually started fights or pushed other students around, and those who spread mean rumors about other students.
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