| Project Detail |
SHADES holds great potential for scientific breakthroughs in unravelling the complexities of school bullying by advancing the understanding of heterogeneous youth who bully their peers and persistent bullying, genetic underpinnings behind them, and life-course of different types of bullies. This will help develop targeted interventions to tackle bullying more efficiently and thus prevent long-lasting suffering of victimized youth and mitigate consequences for bullies.In order to move the field forward, there is an urgent need to shift from studying average effects of bullying or bullies as a homogenous group towards inspecting subtypes among youth tormenting their peers. SHADES addresses gaps in the literature through four objectives. First, it will build a comprehensive understanding of characteristics, motives, and social cognitions of heterogeneous bullies (WP1). Second, by systematically assessing persistent bullying it will draw a nuanced picture of factors influencing continuance and discontinuance of bullying (WP2). Third, it will reveal the underlying polygenic factors contributing to heterogeneity among perpetrators and persistent bullying (WP3). Fourth, it will construct a holistic view of how different types of bullies adapt to various areas of life (e.g. work, relationships) as they transition into adulthood and how genetic factors influence the adjustment (WP4). SHADES will 1) develop two novel instruments: a mobile test of implicit attitudes and motives and an eye-tracking experiment of social cognitions, 2) collect new data (self- and peer-reports + experimental data), and 3) combine existing data into a globally unique longitudinal dataset (survey in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood + genetic data + register data from the same individuals). This enables drawing a comprehensive picture of different types of bullies and persistent bullying at the genetic level, in the short-term (through middle school), and in the long term (up to adulthood). |
