Learning difficulties, social intelligence, and self–concept: Connections to bully–victim problems

Learning skills, social intelligence, and self–concept were related to each other and to bully–victim problems among fifth–grade children (79 boys and 62 girls, aged 11–12 years). In addition to exploring connections between single variables, a person–oriented approach was applied in order to analyze children’s value patterns with respect to learning skills, self–concept, and social intelligence, and how these value patterns are related to bully–victim problems. Social intelligence was found to be positively correlated with learning skills, but negatively related to victimization. Bullying was positively correlated with self–concept scores. However, this was true only of boys. According to cross–tabulations, there were significantly more bullies among children with learning difficulties (LD) than would have been expected by chance. Victimization, on the other hand, was not related to LD. LD children’s proposed victim status was in some degree supported by cluster analysis: a group of LD children emerged, who not only scored high on bullying, but also tended to be victimized by others. In addition, two groups of bullies appeared: one whose members could be interpreted as socially unskilled and another as socially skilled. This finding is in line with recent theoretical reasoning, which calls into question the idea of bullies as a unified group, lacking in social skills.