The impact of bullying cognition on school bullying among Chinese primary school students: a moderated mediation model of resilience and sex

Front Public Health. 2024 Oct 16:12:1470322. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1470322. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Background: Previous studies have shown the positive effects of bullying cognition on school bullying behavior among young people, but the mechanism underlying this association remains unclear.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study with 5,903 primary school students in grades 3-5 in Luzhou city. Hayes' PROCESS macro was used to test the mediating effect of psychological resilience and the moderating effect of sex on the relationship between bullying cognition and school bullying after controlling for grade.

Results: Psychological resilience partially mediated the relationship between school bullying cognition and victimization (β = -0.0174, 95% CI: -0.0219 to -0.0132) and between perpetration (β = -0.0079, 95% CI: -0.0104 to -0.0055). This study revealed that sex moderated the relationship between school bullying cognition and perpetration (β = 0.0383, p < 0.001) and victimization behavior (β = 0.0400, p < 0.001).

Conclusion: These findings suggest that it is crucial for education regulators, schools, and families to cultivate students' school bullying cognitions and psychological resilience, which may help to decrease the prevalence of school bullying. Especially for boys, improving their bullying cognition may largely decrease its perpetration.

Keywords: cognition; mediating effect; moderating effect; primary school students; psychological resilience; school bullying.

MeSH terms

  • Bullying* / psychology
  • Bullying* / statistics & numerical data
  • Child
  • China
  • Cognition*
  • Crime Victims / psychology
  • Crime Victims / statistics & numerical data
  • Cross-Sectional Studies
  • East Asian People
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Resilience, Psychological*
  • Schools*
  • Sex Factors
  • Students* / psychology
  • Students* / statistics & numerical data
  • Surveys and Questionnaires

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This study was supported in part by grants from the Sichuan Mental Health Education Research Center (XLJKJY2343B), 2022 Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program for College Students in Sichuan Province (S202310632277), 2021 School-level Project of Southwest Medical University [2021KPZP05] and 2023 Sichuan Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program for College Students [S202310632277], China.