How classmates’ evaluation of and behavior toward (victimized) children affects their well-being: An examination of implicit and explicit processes

As people have the need to belong, receiving negative social cues from group members can lead to poor well-being in the recipient. This may be even more pronounced in victims of bullying, yet these social cues may not only be communicated on a deliberate or explicit level. This preregistered study ( https://osf.io/4ksyz ) therefore examines classmates’ implicit and explicit attitudes as well as automatic behavior and deliberate behavior intentions toward children and their concurrent and longitudinal effect on these children’s well-being. Self and peer reports of well-being (sadness, anger, withdrawal, reactive aggression) and self-reported victimization were measured twice among 948 Dutch third to sixth graders in 46 classrooms. We measured classmates’ implicit (Approach Avoidance Task [AAT]) and explicit (liking) attitude and automatic (facial expression) and deliberate (intended) behavior toward a victimized and a neutral child. Results show that classmates’ uncivil deliberate behavior intentions toward a child were associated with that child developing more anger and internalizing problems over time. For victimized children specifically, classmates’ uncivil behavior intentions toward them additionally posed a risk for developing more reactive aggression over time. Victims also experienced poorer well-being and received more uncivil deliberate behavior intentions from classmates than their non-victimized counterparts, but classmates’ attitudes and behavior were not related to the continuation of the victimization itself. These results suggest that in addition to efforts to stop the victimization itself, aiming to prevent victims from being exposed to deliberate uncivil acts by peers might benefit their well-being.