Bullying and Aggressive Behaviour

The Bullying and Aggressive Behaviour group undertakes research that broadly reflects how bullying and aggressive behaviour is defined, experienced, and the psychological impact of involvement in such behaviours. As a group, we focus on a range of in person and online aggressive behaviours including peer victimisation, face-to-face bullying, cyber/online bullying, online aggression, banter, harassment in public places, aggression in interpersonal relationships, social inequalities and their implications for peer relationships, digital literacy for online safety, and the social and emotional impacts of these behaviours.

Group members are currently undertaking national and international research that examines:

• The bullying / banter distinction
• The individual impact of aggressive behaviour
• Characteristics of perpetrators and targets in aggressive contexts
• Individual differences in aggressive behaviours
• The lived experience of online risks and fear of missing out
• The impact of involvement in cyberbullying and perceptions of risk
• Understanding and interpreting ambiguous communications such as banter
• The responses of parents and teachers to problematic social media content sharing
• Cyberbullying involvement and morality
• Teachers’ management of banter and bullying
• The impact of parental separation on children
• Experiences of vulnerable populations at school
• Understanding what works in sexual consent training programmes at universities
• Parental constructions of adolescent sexting
• Definitions of online harassment and cyber education
• Unwanted sexual attention in the night-time economy.

You can contact the team via email, here.

We have worked with a range of organisations including:

• The Anti-Bullying Alliance
• Anti-Bullying Quality Mark UK
• Juno Women’s Aid
• Nottinghamshire Women’s Aid
• Local authorities
• Schools

Abell, L., Buglass, S. L., Betts, L. R., & Morohunfola, T. (2023). “It’s all part of the culture”: undergraduate students’ experiences of banter in university sports clubs and societies. Current Psychology, 1-13.

Abell, L., Buglass, S., & Betts, L. (2019). Fear of missing out and relational aggression on Facebook. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 22 (12), 799-803.

Badrakh, A., Larkin, R., Betts, L. R., & Buglass, S. L. (in press). Psychosocial wellbeing, problematic social media use, and cyberbullying involvement among Mongolian adolescents. International Journal of Bullying Prevention.

Baguley, T., Dunham, G. & Steer, O. (2022). Statistical modelling of vignette data in psychology. British Journal of Psychology, 113 (4), 1143-1163.

Betts, L. R., Abell, L., & Buglass, S. L. (2023). Comparative Optimism and Perceptions of Specific Online Risks. Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science, 1-16.

Betts, L. R., Spenser, K. A., & Baguley, T. (2022). Describing disclosure of cybervictimization in adolescents from the United Kingdom: The role of age, gender, involvement in cyberbullying, and time spent online. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 183, 40-53.

Bloxsom, C. A., Firth, J., Kibowski, F., Egan, V., Sumich, A. L., & Heym, N. (2021). Dark shadow of the self: How the dark triad and empathy impact parental and intimate adult attachment relationships in women. Forensic Science International: Mind and Law, 2, 100045.

Buglass, S., Abell, L., Betts, L. R., Hill, R., & Saunders, J. (2021). Banter versus bullying: A student perspective. International Journal for Bullying prevention, 3, 287-299.

Buglass, S., Binder, J. F., Betts, L. R., & Underwood, J. D. M. (2021). Asymmetrical third-person effects on the perceptions of online risk and harm among adolescents and adults. Behavior and Information Technology, 40, 1091-1100.

Heym, N., Kibowski, F., Bloxsom, C. A., Blanchard, A., Harper, A., Wallace, L., ... & Sumich, A. (2021). The Dark Empath: Characterising dark traits in the presence of empathy. Personality and individual differences, 169, 110172.

Seymour-Smith, S., & Kloess, J. A. (2021). A discursive analysis of compliance, resistance and escalation to threats in sexually exploitative interactions between offenders and male children. British Journal of Social Psychology, 60, 988-1011.

Sleeman, M., Friesen, M., Tyler-Merrick, G., & Walker, L. (2021). The effects of precision teaching and self-regulated learning on early multiplication fluency. Journal of Behavioral Education, 30, 149-177.

Steer, O., Betts, L. R., Baguley, T., & Binder, J. F. (2020). "I feel like everyone does it"- Adolescents' perceptions and awareness of the association between humour, banter, and cyberbullying. Computers in Human Behavior,108: 106297.

Thompson, B., Tickle, A. & Dillon, G. (2021). Discovery awareness for staff supporting individuals with intellectual disabilities and challenging behaviour: is it helpful and does it increase self-efficacy? International Journal of Developmental Disabilities, 67(1), pp. 44-57.

Tura, F., Nomikos, E., & Betts, L. R. (2023). Prevalence and predictors of poly-victimization of adolescents in England and Wales. Journal of interpersonal violence, 38(5-6), 4688-4713.

Vinter, L., Dillon, G., & Winder, B. (2023). 'People don’t like you when you’re different': exploring the prison experiences of autistic individuals. Psychology, Crime and Law, 29, 243-262.