Attribution Of Bullying Behavior In Children Aged 4-6

Bullying is one of an aggressive behavior among in children. We often see that children show different forms of bullying, such as pushing, snatch, ridicule and rejection in kindergarten.And even many children suffer from it, showing withdrawal, anxiety, peer rejection and other problems. What’s more, some of the children rely on the advantage of themselves or groups to bully the vulnerable children, leaving a negative impression on children of involving bullying.We also find that the examination of children’s cognitive can contribute to our study of bullying,to make a deep investigate of children’s motives which cause them to bully others, then to formulate intervention strategies, and to improve children’s behavior. Attribution is a theme,always tied to behaviors judgments, that is to predict or explain people’s behavior causation. The social information processing theory point out there has an trend that bullies tend to attribute other’s intention to hostility, and lead to the occurrence of behavioral problems. Recently,researchers have found that the instrumental motivation of bullies(such as social status or other objects) will induce them to bully others. Certainly, it is greatly benefit for us to understand the intrinsic characteristic of children’s bullying, as well as to master the children’s inward thoughts in time and help children establish appropriate and positive attribution style.185 children aged 4-6 years from 3 kindergartens had been selected as the research subjects.The sample consisted of 102 middle class, 83 senior class, included 98 boys(accounted for 53%)and 87 girls(accounted for 87%). Among them, the minimum age is 3.96, the maximum is 6.95,and the average age is 5.03±0.82. What’s more, this study used questionnaire and interview to analysis date, and to put forward the corresponding strategies to improve children’s behavior.The conclusions were follows:Firstly, the results indicated that youth aged 4-6 years tended to explain bullying in terms of society attributing, bully attributing, victim attributing and social environment attributing, also a certain youth didn’t have the ability to attribute.Secondly, there was no age difference in bullying attribution among the children aged 4-6.Thirdly, the study also did not found gender difference in bullying attribution among the children aged 4-6.Fourth, bullies, victims, bullies/victims, and bystanders had different bullying attribution.Compared with victims, bullies and bystanders were more likely attribute bullying causes to the social environment.