Bullying is using force, coercion, hurtful teasing, or the threat of abuse, aggressive control, or intimidation. It is a subtype of aggressive behaviour exhibited to physically, mentally, or emotionally hurt another individual. This type of behaviour is often repetitive and habitual.
Peer abuse is bullying encountered at school or the workplace by the victim. The bully can have one or more followers willing to help the primary bully or reinforce it with positive feedback such as laughter.
Bullying can be categorised into four basic types of harm – psychological (sometimes called emotional or relational), verbal, physical, and cyber.
Physical bullying harms a person’s body or damages their belongings. Stealing, pushing, hitting, fighting, or deliberately destroying someone’s property is a form of physical bullying.
Verbal bullying is done through speaking, other vocal uses, or any form of body language that does not involve physical contact. Verbal bullying is often common between boys and girls, but girls are more likely to engage in it.
Relationship bullying is a type of bullying that uses relationships to hurt others. The term also refers to bullying done with the intent to harm a person’s reputation or social standing and may also be associated with physical and verbal bullying techniques.
Bullying can cause loneliness, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and increased susceptibility to illness. Victims of bullying can develop long-term emotional and behavioural problems. Bullying has also been shown to lead to maladaptation in young children, exhibiting even more significant social difficulties if the victim of bullying is also the bully.
The present study explored the dynamics of bullying (that is, as a victim, a bully, and an observer) by assessing various brain event-related potentials [Early Posterior Negativity(EPN) and Late Positivity Potential (LPP)] during a passive visualisation task containing positive, neutral, and negative social imagery.
The Early Posterior Negativity component is involved in the early stages of emotional processing. It is considered an indicator of the degree of visual attention and the early encoding of affective discrimination in positive and negative emotions compared with neutral feelings.
The Late Positive Potential (LPP) is an ERP component that provides a neural measure of emotional processing.
Previous research on emotional processing in children involved in school bullying found that bullying was a predictor of lifelong emotional problems and that negative emotions mediated the effects of peer sacrifice on perpetrators of bullying.
The present research hypothesised that more significant emotional responses occur over time in bullying victims than in bullies and bystanders. This is reflected in the EPN and LPP components.
The study includes 45 children aged between 8 to 12 years (21 females, 24 males). The exclusion criteria for this research were current medical or psychological treatment, intellectual disability, brain injury, epilepsy, and visual problems without correction.
A passive visualisation task was used where a total of 36 images were taken from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS); they were presented on a 19-inch flat-screen monitor located approximately 60 cm from the child.
All images were presented twice in four balanced sequences of 72 slides each, with the rule that embodiments of the same social category were not presented consecutively. The pictures were displayed for 1,000 milliseconds.
The Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) was used to evaluate the pictures effectively.
The School Bullying Questionnaire—Abbreviated was used to detect the risk of bullying in subjects between 8 and 18 years of age.
The School Coexistence Questionnaire was used to identify school bullying by considering three types of participants (bully, victim, and observer) and different types of aggression (physical, social, and verbal).
The Childhood Depression Inventory is used to evaluate clinical indicators of depression in children and adolescents.
The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children was used to assess the child’s level of anxiety throughout the study.
It was observed that negative images elicited greater emotional activation and attention retention (higher LPP amplitude) compared to neutral and positive imagery. Victims of bullying had higher EPN and LPP amplitudes, indicating a greater need for emotional activation and attention.
In conclusion, to curb the issue of bullying at school, these findings help in understanding the concept of school bullying by identifying a possible neurophysiological vulnerability factor.
