earticle

영어

The purposes of this study were to investigate attribution biases, especially the observers- victims’ perceptions about bullying behavior, and to understand the maintaining factors of bullying by examining how the attribution biases may affect bystanders’ attitudes. The participants were 367 middle school students(188 boys and 179 girls) and they completed the Bullying Attribution Questionnaire and the Questionnaire of Bystander Attitudes. In this study, the Bullying Attribution Questionnaire was developed to assess adolescents’ attribution styles in the hypothetical bullying situations. The results of this study showed that participants tended to make external and unstable attributions for bullying situations. Second, there were significant differences of attribution between observers and victims for bullying situations. Specifically, the participants from the observer perspectives tended to attribute the bullying behavior to internal-stable causes of the victim such as personal dispositions. On the other hand, participants from the victim perspectives were more likely to attribute the bullying situation to external-unstable causes than those from the observer perspectives. Third, the internal-stable and internal-unstable attributions of the observer perspectives were significantly associated with bystanders’ attitudes. The limitations of this study and suggestions for future research were discussed.