Aggression refers to actions that intend to harm people or objects, and can be expressed physically or verbally. There are two types of aggressive behaviors, reactive aggression (RA) and proactive aggression (PA). RA is impulsive and occurs in response to a perceived threat or provocation, often associated with high emotional and physiological arousal. This type of aggression is consistent with the frustration-aggression model, which suggests that aggression results from frustration and can be directed towards the source of frustration or others who are not directly involved (Dodge & Coie, 1987; Tam & Taki, 2007). PA, on the other hand, is deliberate and purposeful, aimed at achieving a specific goal, and is often motivated by the anticipation of a reward. PA could be further categorized into proactive-power related aggression (PPA) and proactive-affiliation related aggression (PAA). PPA highlights the positive emotions of the aggressors on the victims, whereas the focus of the PAA is the positive emotions (e.g., sense of belongings, in-group identity) derived from the affiliation between the aggressors (Roland & Idsøe, 2001). Hence, PPA is “person-directed” that focuses on the positive emotions stemming from the domination on the victims. In contrast, PAA is “object-oriented,” which pinpoints the roles of the privilege deriving from other aggressors.
Despite the well-established positive relationship between aggression and bullying perpetration, limited studies have further distinguished the effect of PPA and PAA on bullying behavior in which it could denote different etiologies of school bullying (Fung 2019; Roland & Idsøe, 2001; Runions et al., 2018). In order to effectively prevent and decrease both RA and PA, moreover, it is crucial to recognize the underlying mediating and moderating mechanisms behind their effects (Cen et al., 2022). By understanding these underlying mechanisms, interventions can be developed and implemented to mitigate the adverse effect of aggression on school bullying behavior. However, most of the prior studies centered their analysis on exploring the mediating and moderating role of intrapersonal factors such as sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., age), personality trait, and moral disengagement (Cen et al., 2021; Valido et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2020) on the aggression-bullying relationship, whereas limited attention has been placed on the moderating role of sociological factors in the line of aggression-bullying research. To fill this research gap, this study draws on the key propositions of leading criminology theories such as the social learning theory to argue aggression may foster the aggressor’s exposure to violence and social learning of violence, leading to engagement in school bullying perpetration. Additionally, drawing on the key propositions of social bonding theory and neutralization theory, this study also aims to explore the moderating role of opportunity factors (neutralization of use of violence, family harmony, and positive school climate) on the indirect effect of aggression on bullying perpetration. Given the complexity of school bullying, this study attempts to assert that bullying is not merely an emotional-driven behavior nor a learned behavior. Rather, school bullying is a situational behavior that requires a deeper understanding of the mechanisms involved.
Aggression may foster exposure to violence
Despite ample research has been conducted to examine associations between aggression and bullying, there is a paucity of research that incorporates sociological factors underlying the aggression-bullying relationship. Probably, one of the possible underlying pathway could be contributed to the social network analysis (Shi & Xie, 2012). During adolescence, the role of adult supervision diminishes while peer interactions become more frequent and significant. This shift in importance may have an impact on both aggression and antisocial behavior. Previous studies have consistently demonstrated that adolescents tend to be similar to their friends in terms of behavior and attitudes, which can be attributed to two distinct processes: selection and socialization (Brechwald & Prinstein, 2011; Verheijen et al., 2021). The selection process refers to the tendency for adolescents to form and maintain friendships with peers who share similar behaviors, characteristics, and attitudes. Meanwhile, socialization is the inclination for adolescents to adopt the behaviors of their existing friends, which leads to an increase in similarity in behaviors over time. Pertaining into the aggression-bullying relationship, it is noteworthy that aggression is negatively associated with perceived popularity status in school (Shi & Xie, 2012). The aggressive children are often disliked, rejected, or even socially excluded by conventional peers in school. As result, aggressive children might tend to affiliate with others who share similar social characteristics such as the level of aggression and social rejection, leading to homophily in their friendship with peers (Jose et al., 2016; Sijtsema et al., 2010). Additionally, children with a higher level of aggression may have a higher exposure to other aggressive or delinquent peers and it may foster one’s social learning of violence by modelling the acts from their aggressive social group, indicating a socialization effect (Verheijen et al., 2021).
Since the advent of the digital era, growing research have been conducted to examine how social media prompt acts of violence against children and adolescents (Li et al., 2022; Yao et al., 2019). For those children with a high level of aggression, violent social media may provide a crucial platform for them to fulfill their aggressive desires and fantasies. To further illustrate, the violent content in the virtual world may alternatively create aggressive scripts for the aggressive children to rehearse their aggressive means online and later execute the scripts in reality (Gilbert & Daffern, 2017). Empirical evidence discovered that aggressive children are more likely to expose to violent media online than their conventional counterparts (Bushman & Huesmann, 2006). Taking this idea one step forward, longer exposure to violence is said to foster children’s social learning of aggressive beliefs and behaviors, which may drive them to imitate the aggressive behavior to solve interpersonal conflicts.
Aggression, exposure to violence, opportunity factors, and bullying
As noted, prolonged exposure to violence may foster the aggressors’ social learning of crime and violence which denotes that adolescents who have aggressive friends become more antisocial over time (Verheijen et al., 2021). However, previous social network studies pointed out that outcomes of socialization process of both prosocial and antisocial behavior could be heterogenous, and such differences may be contributed to individual differences in social cognition (Dishion & Connel, 2006). For instance, Jones and his colleagues (2013) found that the effect of peer influence on aggressive behavior was moderated by adolescents’ social-cognitive processes in which adolescents with high levels of hostile attributional bias have higher odds of adopting the aggressive behavior of their peers. Furthermore, previous research has highlighted the variability in adaptation among youth exposed to violence, and more precisely, family harmony and school attachment may play a crucial role in mitigating the adverse effect of exposure to violence on illicit behaviors (Barbarin et al., 2001; Overstreet et al., 1999; Ozer, 2005). Nonetheless, these studies incorporate exposure to violence as exogenous variable in which role of aggression was overlooked in their analysis.
The present study
Consequently, this study attempts to explore whether the indirect effect of aggression on bullying via exposure to violence could be mitigated or aggravated by three opportunity factors (neutralization of use of violence, family harmony, and positive school climate)[1]. The first opportunity factor refers to the key proposition of neutralization theory which originally suggests individual would justify their deviant behavior by employing different neutralization techniques to relieve their moral constraint to commit crime and delinquency (Zhang & Leidner, 2018). This study would employ the technique of “defense of necessity” which refers to one’s value orientation towards crime and delinquency such that a more positive attitudes towards crime and deviance would result in a lower level of shame and guilty of committing illicit act (in this study, bullying) (Minor, 1981). On the other hand, social control theory (SCT), as proposed by Hirschi (1969), suggests that the family and school are social institutions that can foster a sense of attachment, social bonds, and personal commitment in individuals, leading them to strive for socially desirable goals. Therefore, it is conceivable that even if an individual has learned maladaptive behaviors at home, positive family and school environment can still provide positive social bonds and corrective social learning experiences. Hence, the following hypotheses were formulated:
H1a. RA is positively associated with school bullying perpetration.
H1b. PPA is positively associated with school bullying perpetration.
H1c. PAA is positively associated with school bullying perpetration.
H2a. RA, PPA, and PAA are positively associated with exposure to violence respectively.
H2b. Exposure to violence is positively associated with school bullying perpetration.
H2c. Exposure to violence mediates the effect of RA, PPA, and PAA on school bullying perpetration.
H3a. Neutralization technique positively aggravates the indirect effect of RA, PPA, and PAA on school bullying perpetration via exposure to violence.
H3b. Family harmony attenuates the indirect effect of RA, PPA, and PAA on school bullying perpetration via exposure to violence.
H3c. Positive school climate attenuates the indirect effect of RA, PPA, and PAA on school bullying perpetration via exposure to violence.