How Does Individualism-Collectivism Relate to Bullying Victimisation?

The Prevalence of Victimisation

Here, the dominant hypothesis has been that rates of victimisation would be higher in individualist societies, due to the inhibition of conflict (at least, within-group conflict) in collectivist societies. This hypothesis, at least as simply stated, was not confirmed. The picture from HBSC data is complex and intriguing. Of 18 correlations, nine are positive (one significant) and nine are negative (five significant). However, the trend over time is very clear: all the 1994 and 1998 correlations are positive; all the 2010 and 2014 correlations are negative. Those from 2002 and 2006 suggest a swing from positive to negative correlations. These linear trends are highly significant for each age group. In addition, there are age differences, with 15-year-olds having significantly more positive or less negative correlations than the 11- and 13-year-olds.

The data shown in Table 2 from the other four surveys all come from post-2002 data and give a similar picture of mainly negative correlations, including the only significant correlation. Although the individual correlations are often small, those from EUKO, GSHS, and TIMSS (for three out of four correlations, one significant) are negative. PISA has a negative correlation for the overall prevalence measure and a very small positive correlation with the index score. Overall, these findings provide some confirmation of lower victimisation rates in high IDV societies, in this century.

What might explain these findings? A first methodological point is that in the 1994 and 1998 HBSC surveys, victimisation figures included being victimised just once, whereas the later surveys only included being victimised two or three times or more (in the past couple of months). However, there is no obvious reason why this would affect the correlations with IDV across countries. Furthermore, the picture from Fig. 1 is of a continuous gradual transition, rather than an abrupt one at the 1998/2002 transition.

Another consideration is the change in coverage of countries over the different surveys. The earlier surveys had somewhat fewer countries (21, 25) contributing to the analysis, than the later ones (30+). Again however, this would suggest an abrupt change at the 1998/2002 boundary; from 2002 onwards, there is little change in the countries involved.

We hypothesise another explanation for the trend in Fig. 1. Previously, we (Smith et al. 2018) have suggested the use of the EU Kids Online five-factor model as a useful explanatory framework for country differences. The five factors are cultural values, education system, technological infrastructure, regulatory framework, and socioeconomic stratification. Of these, we suggest that regulatory framework is a likely candidate to help explain the trends observed.

Regulatory framework in this context would refer to laws about bullying, requirements or expectations about school policies, resources for teachers, and implementation of anti-bullying programs or interventions. We know that publications on bullying and victimisation have increased enormously over the last decade (Zych et al. 2015; Volk et al. 2017; Smith and Berkkun 2019). Furthermore, the great majority of these articles have come from Europe, North America, and Australasia (Zych et al. 2015; Smith and Berkkun 2019). This research has led to many practical initiatives in these countries—including legal measures, resources for schools, and intervention programs (Smith 2017). These have predominately been in the western, more individualistic, countries where the most research has been carried out. There has been much less research in many more collectivist countries in South America, Africa, and Asia. Although not well-documented, this very probably translates into fewer anti-bullying resources and interventions, in such countries. For example, this was explicitly demonstrated for the South-east Asian (ASEAN) countries in a review by Sittichai and Smith (2015). A review of 79 studies of school bullying prevention programs, by Gaffney et al. (2019a), found only 13 were from low IDV countries (Brazil, China, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Romania, Turkey, Zambia). Similarly, a review of 24 studies on cyberbullying prevention programs by Gaffney et al. (2019b) found only 2 (Cyprus, Greece) came from low IDV countries.

We therefore suggest as a hypothesis that (a) historically, victimisation rates were higher in individualist societies, for the reasons proposed by many theorists, namely that collectivist societies value harmony in the group and strongly discourage within group conflicts; but that (b) over the last two decades, and most especially in the last decade, the more individualistic societies (in Europe, North America, and Australasia) have pursued a human rights agenda (Greene 2006) which, among other aspects, has built on the volume of research on school bullying in ways that have reduced the prevalence of victimisation. These ways have included legal measures against bullying (Butler et al. 2009), schools being required to have anti-bullying policies (Samara and Smith 2008), more resources for teachers, and the implementation of whole-school intervention programs. We know that on average, anti-bullying programs do reduce victimisation levels (Gaffney et al. 2019a, b). There is evidence for a fall in victim rates in many (predominately high IDV) countries (Rigby and Smith 2011) including the USA (Waasdorp et al. 2017).

This hypothesis could be tested further by making more accurate assessments of the extent of regulatory framework activities in different countries, how these have changed over time, and relating these together with IDV scores to victimisation rates. A specific prediction would be that as more resources and interventions are developed in non-western, more collectivist, societies, the correlations of IDV with victimisation rates would become less negative than they are at present.

It is not clear that this hypothesis throws any light on the age differences in Fig. 1. There is evidence that anti-bullying interventions have more success at younger age ranges (Yeager et al. 2015); thus, the impact of regulatory framework activities could be predicted to be greatest at 11 years and least at 15 years. This would predict a difference in slope for the three age groups in Fig. 1. However, this is not what is found; Fig. 1 shows that 15-year-olds have higher correlations of IDV with victimisation rates, than 13- or 11-year-olds. In other words, the theoretical prediction of higher victimisation rates in high IDV societies applies more to 15-year-olds, than to 13- and 11-year-olds. This suggests an age trend common to different countries and historical periods, which may reflect greater adherence to cultural norms (here, of IDV) in the mid-adolescent period (Knoll et al. 2015).

The Proportion of Relational Victimisation

Here, the differential reinforcement hypothesis has been that relational forms of victimisation, such as social exclusion and rumour spreading, would relatively (as a proportion of all victimisation) be more frequent in collectivist societies. Social exclusion would seem to be a very effective way to hurt someone, in a collectivist society. However, Forbes et al. (2009) suggested an alternative parallel forms hypothesis that all forms of victimisation correlate together highly and covary, while Pfundmair et al. (2015) proposed a contrary hypothesis that social exclusion would be less hurtful in collectivist societies, since the individual self was less important.

The evidence we obtained, from GSHS, TIMSS, and PISA data, does vary by survey. The three correlations obtained from GSHS and PISA are small and non-significant and in themselves would give support to the parallel forms hypothesis. However, the findings from TIMSS clearly give most support to the Pfundmair hypothesis. This is especially marked for the direct social exclusion item (‘left me out of their games or activities’) and less so for the items related to indirect methods—spreading lies, sharing embarrassing information. This could be seen as consistent with the argument of Pfundmair et al. (2015) that in collectivistic societies, the individual self is less sensitive to individual social exclusion.

Nevertheless, the situation regarding social exclusion in different countries appears complex, and more evidence across a range of countries is needed. It also needs to be borne in mind that in some societies, such as Japan, some kinds of social exclusion may be considered normative and therefore not bullying (or ijime), so the extent of such kinds of victimisation may be under-represented in self-report data.

The Ratio of Bullies to Victims

The hypothesis here is that in collectivist societies, there would be a higher ratio of bullies to victims. This could be expected if social exclusion was a major form of bullying and/or if bullying was mainly an in-class phenomenon. While evidence from Japan and South Korea supports this supposition, evidence from China does not; Ji et al. (2016) found a low bully:victim ratio in China.

Our results here are restricted to data from HBSC, but cover the six survey periods and three age groups. The prediction is supported, albeit rather weakly. Most of the correlations are in the predicted direction, and this is significant on a sign test, even though none is individually significant. In other words, the trend is consistent but small, with many country exceptions. Even if social exclusion is not more proportionately prevalent in many collectivist societies, it appears to be that when bullying does happen (of whatever kind), rather more bullies are likely to be involved in some collectivist societies than would be the case in individualist societies.