What Makes a Defender? A Multilevel Study of Individual Correlates and Classroom Norms in Explaining Defending Behaviors

This study examines the interplay between individual characteristics (social status, provictim attitudes, and family messages about conflict resolution) and classroom descriptive and injunctive norms (peer victimization behaviors and bullying-related beliefs, respectively) in explaining defending behavior. For this purpose, we used a representative sample of 2,050 Spanish primary school children (50.80% girls) from grades 3–6 (M = 9.80 years; SD = 1.24), nested within 103 classrooms in 27 schools. Multilevel modeling analyses showed that both individual and class characteristics helped to explain defending behavior. In addition, random slopes revealed that children with a high social status were more likely to support victims in classrooms where bullying was less accepted. These results expand previous findings in this field, demonstrating the need for a multilevel and interactive approach to the study of defending behavior.