The Effect of Moral Disengagement on Bullying: Testing the Moderating Role of Personal and Social Factors

Abstract

Bullying is a subset of aggressive behavior that has severe consequences in children’s psychosocial development. Bullying behaviors can be influenced by personal and social factors, such as gender, age, school type, and sport participation, as well as psychological constructs, such as moral disengagement. The present study was designed to investigate the effect of moral disengagement on bullying behaviors and the moderating role of personal and social factors. In this study, 2,252 students (M = 13.57, SD = 1.17; 1,125 girls, and 1,127 boys) attending the sixth grade of primary school and secondary education have participated. Participants completed the revised Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire and Bandura’s Moral Disengagement Questionnaire along with general questions about their demographic characteristics. The results of the analyses demonstrated moderation effects of gender on the moral disengagement–physical bullying relationship and of age on the moral disengagement–verbal bullying relationship. No significant moderating effect emerged for school type and sport participation. The findings of the present study provide valuable information about the role of personal and social factors on bullying behavior.

Keywords

bullying aggression social-cognitive demographics

Bullying is a subset of aggressive behavior that has attracted a lot of attention and has been extensively studied in the last few decades. Bullying manifests in many ways and has severe consequences in children’s psychosocial development, varying from changing environment to suicidal attempts and death (Hellfeldt, Gill, & Johansson, 2018; Östberg, Modin, & Laftman, 2017; Rigby, 2001, 2003; Tambawal & Umar, 2017). It has been associated with mental disorders, and has been attributed to genetic, individual, family, and social/environmental factors (Hess & Scheithauer, 2015). Furthermore, the relevant literature investigated the psychological mechanism that underpins the manifestation of bullying. Social-cognitive theory provides a sound theoretical basis in this respect, suggesting that moral disengagement can influence bullying behaviors (Moore, 2015). According to the theory, the effect of moral disengagement is largely dependent on a number of personal and social variables (Hess & Scheithauer, 2015; Malette, 2017). Past evidence has indicated that personal factors and sport involvement can influence both moral disengagement and bullying behavior (Jankauskiene, Kardelis, Sukys, & Kardeliene, 2008; Runions & Bak, 2015). Therefore, the present study set out to investigate the interplay between psychological, personal, and environmental factors in predicting bullying behavior manifested in school settings.

Bullying is a form of aggressive behavior that mainly occurs during childhood and adolescence. It involves an assault that may be physical, verbal, or psychological with the purpose of causing fear, anxiety, or pain to the victim. Moreover, there is a significant difference in power between the victim and the bully, the attack is unprovoked, and occurs repeatedly over a long period (Farrington, 1993; Hess & Scheithauer, 2015). There are two major types of bullying, direct (obvious harassment) and indirect (social isolation of the victim (Olweus, 1993). These two types of bullying comprise additional classifications: (a) physical bullying, (b) verbal bullying, (c) emotional or social bullying, (d) racial bullying, (e) sexual bullying, (f) cyberbullying, and (g) a combination of the previous (Colorosso, 2003; Davis & Davis, 2007; Duncan, 1999; Smith, 2003). These forms of intimidation are largely manifested in the school environment. For this reason, the term bullying is typically used to describe the occurrence of several forms of aggressive behaviors at school. People involved in bullying behaviors can be bullies (i.e., those manifesting an aggressive act), victims (i.e., those who are negatively affected by the acts of another person), reinforcers (i.e., those who assist the bully), defenders (i.e., those who intervene to defend the victim), or outsiders (i.e., those not being directly involved in the behavior (Gini, 2006; Salmivalli & Nieminen, 2002).

One of the most prominent theories on bullying is the sociocognitive theory, which includes the study of moral disengagement. According to this theoretical perspective (Bandura, 1999, 2002), one’s morality strongly influences the expression of aggressive behavior. In particular, self-regulatory moral mechanisms, that is, moral disengagement, contribute significantly to the decision-making process relevant to the behavior, either by inhibiting or justifying it. Moral disengagement helps the individual feel self-worthy and to maintain his or her morality. It refers to a set of eight cognitive mechanisms that dissociate one’s internal moral standards from one’s actions, facilitating engagement in unethical behaviors without experiencing negative emotions (Moore, 2015). Moral disengagement functions as a defense mechanism that protects the person from the distress caused by such behaviors (Bandura, 1991).

In relation to bullying behaviors, several studies have shown that adolescents with higher levels of moral disengagement are more likely to be involved in traditional bullying, cyberbullying, or both modes of bullying (Bauman & Pero, 2011; Lazuras, Pyżalski, Barkoukis, & Tsorbatzoudis, 2012; Perren & Gutzwiller-Helfenfinger, 2012; Pornari & Wood, 2010). Past research suggested that moral disengagement is positively associated with the manifestation of aggressive behaviors (Bandura, 2002; Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, & Pastorelli, 1996; Gini, 2006; Pornari & Wood, 2010). With respect to the independent effect of moral disengagement mechanisms, there is evidence reporting that moral justification is a significant predictor of bullying (Bauman & Pero, 2011; Perren & Gutzwiller-Helfenfinger, 2012).

Menesini and colleagues (2003) indicated that bullies, compared with victims and outsiders, displayed higher moral disengagement levels, when asked to step into the shoes of the bully. Similarly, Thornberg and Jungert (2014) noted that moral disengagement is positively correlated with the occurrence of bullying. Furthermore, a study conducted in Canada, involving high school students (Hymel, Rocke-Henderson, & Bonanno, 2005), indicated that students who were bullies but were never victimized scored high in moral disengagement. Conversely, students who sometimes played the role of the bully but were also victimized experienced reduced moral disengagement. Also, the study demonstrated that two moral disengagement strategies were significantly associated with bullying: cognitive restructuring and accountability to the victim (blaming the victim).

Similar findings emerged from a survey accomplished in Italy (Gini, 2006), pinpointing that children who had the role of the bully, the assistant, and/or the reinforcer showed higher levels of moral disengagement than defenders while bullies indicated higher levels of both outsiders and victims. In Japan, the euphemistic language was negatively associated with all types of bullying (Ando, Asakura, & Simons-Morton, 2005). In Portugal, moral disengagement negated children’s attitudes regarding the roles of the bully. Moreover, moral disengagement was positively correlated with the role of the bully and negatively correlated with the role of the victim (Almeida, Correia, & Marinho, 2010). Similarly, findings reported in a more recent study in Denmark indicated that bullies and bully victims displayed significantly higher levels of moral disengagement compared with outsiders (Obermann, 2011).

Similar findings were also reported in the Pozzoli, Gini, and Vieno (2012) study, examining the effect of the mechanisms of moral disengagement in the appearance of bullying behavior in primary school students. The results confirmed the effect of moral disengagement on bullying, and more specifically the effect of specific mechanisms, such as diffusion of responsibility, distortion of consequences, and attribution of blame to the victim. Moreover, these findings were supported by the study of De Caroli and Sagone (2014) which examined the relationship between the mechanisms of moral disengagement and bullying in different age categories. The results of this study showed that children and adolescents were more likely to use all mechanisms of moral disengagement to justify bullying behavior compared with college students. Also, compared with girls, boys were more likely to use moral disengagement to justify their involvement in bullying events.

Recently, Gini, Pozzoli, and Hymel (2014) performed a meta-analysis, examining the relationship between moral disengagement and bullying behaviors. The results of this meta-analysis portrayed that moral disengagement is a significant predictor of bullying behavior in children and adolescents. Indeed, the effect was greater in adolescents and did not differ by the type of bullying or gender. These findings highlight the importance of moral disengagement as a mechanism that leads to bullying, and can be used to create effective interventions to tackle this phenomenon. Overall, the mechanisms of moral disengagement can yield important information about the causes and psychological processes that lead to bullying. This information could be incorporated into existing intervention programs, to improve them, or be used to form the basis for future interventions targeting moral development and behavior of children (Hymel & Perren, 2015).

Apart from the psychological mechanisms related to bullying, there are also specific personal and social/environmental factors that are also associated with its manifestation (Hess & Scheithauer, 2015; Malette, 2017). For example, age and gender are two characteristics that may influence bullying behaviors. With respect to age, past evidence showed that older children are more aware of and manifest more often bullying behaviors, and they can better identify bullying behavior compared with younger children (Del Rey et al., 2016; Scheithauer, Hayer, Petermann, & Jugert, 2006; Schultze-Krumbholz et al., 2015). Also, there are differences in the perceptions of bullying and the types of bullying performed across gender. It is widely accepted that boys engage more in physical bullying, while girls engage in verbal bullying (Boulton, Trueman, & Flemington, 2002; Schultze-Krumbholz et al., 2015; Smith, Cowie, Olafsson, & Liefooghe, 2002; Smith, Mahdavi, Carvalho, & Tippett, 2006). A recent study, however, showed no gender differences in victimization (Peters, Hatzenbuehler, & Davidson, 2015). The meta-analysis by Gini and colleagues (2014) showed that gender does not have a moderating effect in the relationship between moral disengagement and aggression/bullying, while age does affect this relationship. However, in both cases, it is argued that the number of studies that have investigated this relationship is small and, therefore, no safe assumptions can be made. Thus, the role of age and gender needs to be more thoroughly examined.

Moreover, another factor that is considered to influence the manifestation of bullying is sport involvement and the overall sport environment. Research findings, however, are contradictory. It has been reported that children who engage in sports are more often found in the role of the bully, than those who do not (Jankauskiene et al., 2008). In line with this evidence, preadolescent and adolescent boys who participate in power sports (i.e., boxing and martial arts) are more vulnerable to violent behavior outside sports (i.e., fights and use of weapons) and “non-violent antisocial behaviour such as vandalism, theft and truancy” (Endresen & Olweus, 2005, p. 476). However, Gardner, Roth, and Brooks-Gunn (2009) argued that participation in sports is negatively correlated with noncompliant behaviors. This contradictory evidence might be ascribed to the fact that other aspects of the participants’ environment (i.e., school, family, other sporting experiences) have not been taken into account; thus, further evidence on the role of sport environments in bullying behavior manifestation is warranted.

Furthermore, the type of school (e.g., typical vs. specialized school [e.g., sport schools]) may be another social/environmental factor, influencing bullying behavior. Although the effect of participation in sports has been studied, there are no research findings on whether particular sport schools are related to bullying or not. For instance, Wei, Chang, and Chen (2015) reported high levels of peer-victimization in special schools, yet no comparisons among schools are evident. Bullying is a social phenomenon that occurs during adolescence and, thus, the school environment, culture, and climate can influence the prevalence and severity of bullying incidents (Evans & Smokowski, 2015; Farmer et al., 2012; Östberg et al., 2017; Thornberg, Wänström, Pozzoli, & Gini, 2018). Importantly, students attending a sporting school would interact with fellow athletes and sport people during both their schooling activities and in the out-of-school time (i.e., training in a competitive club). Therefore, the comparison between typical and sport schools could provide important information that is currently missing from the literature on the relationship between the school environment and bullying.

The Present Study

Based on the above-mentioned literature review, it is evidenced that bullying behaviors may also be influenced by children’s and adolescents’ personal and social/environmental factors. Also, moral disengagement has been proliferated as a significant predictor of bullying behaviors. Moreover, social-cognitive theory posits that the person and the environment closely interact to determine behavior; the triadic reciprocal determinism (Bandura, 1978). This interplay between personal and social factors has been found to influence the manifestation of bullying behaviors (Runions & Bak, 2015; Swearer, Wang, Berry, & Myers, 2014). Therefore, personal and social factors could be important variables to better comprehending the underlying mechanism through which moral disengagement is related to bullying. However, in the existing literature, these personal and social variables have been largely treated as independent variables and differences among different groups of people have been mostly examined. Based on the aforementioned literature review, differences have been found consistently with respect to gender and age. This research evidence implies that these factors may moderate the effect of moral disengagement in bullying-related behaviors. Yet, these moderation effects have not been adequately tested in the literature. Furthermore, prior research evidence has shown that social/environmental factors, such as sport participation and school environment may also influence moral disengagement and bullying behaviors.

Taking into consideration the contradictory findings regarding the effect of sport participation on bullying, it is possible that participation in a sporting school would magnify its effect on bullying, as adolescents interact with sport people most of their social time. Yet, the moderating role of such social factors has not received much attention in the literature. Moderation analysis is a sophisticated analysis that allows us to test whether the relation between two variables is dependent on a third one (Cohen, Cohen, West, & Aiken, 2003; Hayes, 2012; Hayes & Preacher, 2014). Considering the fact that previous research has found differences in moral disengagement and bullying, among groups of people with different gender, age, sport participation status, and school environment, moderation analysis could provide valuable information about whether these factors influence the effect of moral disengagement on bullying.

The present study aims to extend previous research by testing the possible moderation role of personal and social factors that have been tested in past literature as independent variables, differentiating adolescents in relation to moral disengagement and bullying. Based on previous evidence on the personal and social/environmental factors, gender, age, school type, and sport participation were chosen as possible moderating variables. These variables have been found to differentially influence the relationship between moral disengagement and bullying. Still, in many of these variables, for instance, sport participation, the results of past evidence are inconclusive and warranted for further investigation. Finally, the role of sport-related institutions, such as sporting schools, has not been adequately addressed in the literature. Hence, the objective of the study was to investigate whether gender, age (childhood vs. adolescence school), school type (typical vs. sport school), and sport participation serve as moderators on the moral disengagement–bullying behavior relationship. Based on prior research, it was hypothesized that the effect of moral disengagement on bullying behavior will be weaker for girls, children, students attending sport schools, and sport participants as compared with boys, adolescents, typical school students, and nonsport participants, respectively.

Method

Participants

The sample consisted of 2,252 students (M = 13.57, SD = 1.17; 1,125 girls, and 1,127 boys) from 41 public schools (24 primary schools and 17 secondary schools) in the prefectures of Attica and Laconia, Greece. Specifically, 538 students were enrolled in the sixth grade of primary school, 602 in first grade, 588 in the second grade, and 524 in the third grade of high school. In Attica, secondary Sporting Schools were located nearby these primary schools. In the prefecture of Laconia, all schools were in the county capital (Sparta) as well as the only Secondary Sporting School of the city. Sporting schools are schools that competitive athletes use to attend. In these schools, athletes/students attend the typical curriculum, but instead of typical physical education classes, they are trained on their sport by certified coaches.

Measures

General questions and demographic characteristics

The first part of the questionnaire included general questions relating to classroom, school, and social and educational level of parents. Three questions were used to distinguish students involved in extracurricular activities (sports or other) between those who were not involved (e.g., Jankauskiene et al., 2008). Sport schools’ students were put into the category of children involved in extracurricular sport activities, because they were also involved in sports regularly. For the purposes of the investigation, the practice of sport was considered as systematic, when it occurred for more than 3 times a week.

Bullying questionnaire

Victimization and bullying were measured via the revised Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire (OBVQ; Olweus, 1996). The questionnaire consisted of eight questions for identifying the victim and eight questions for identifying the bully. The translated and adapted into Greek version of the scale was used (Kyriakides, Kaloyirou, & Lindsay, 2006). The internal consistency coefficient α was .92 for the Victimization subscale and .91 for the Bullying subscale. The questions referred to various forms of bullying and victimization that took place over the period of the last 2 to 3 months. The answers were given on a 5-point scale from never (5), 1 to 2 times (4), 2 to 3 times (3), 1 in a week (2), and many times in 1 week (1).

Moral Disengagement Questionnaire

The Moral Disengagement scale, developed by Bandura and colleagues (1996), was used in this study and included eight moral disengagement factors. Each factor was assessed by four questions: (a) moral justification (e.g., It is alright to fight to protect your friends), (b) euphemistic language (e.g., Slapping and shoving someone is just a way of joking), (c) advantageous comparison (e.g., Damaging some property is no big deal when you consider that others are beating people up), (d) displacement of responsibility (e.g., If kids are living under bad conditions, they cannot be blamed for behaving aggressively), (e) diffusion of responsibility (e.g., A kid in a gang should not be blamed for the trouble the gang causes), (f) distorting consequences (e.g., It is okay to tell small lies because they don’t really do any harm), (g) dehumanization (e.g., Some people deserve to be treated like animals), and (h) attribution of blame (e.g., If kids fight and misbehave in school, it is their teacher’s fault). Students’ answers were given on 5-point Likert-type scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The scale has been translated in Greek through a rigorous translation–back translation process (Douma, 2018). The factorial validity of the scale was tested through a confirmatory factor analysis that supported the factor structure of the scale, χ² = 132.88, p < .001, comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.936, standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) = 0.034, root mean square error approximation (RMSEA) = 0.052) (Douma, 2018).

Procedure

The Ministry of Education provided permission for conducting the study. A random stratified approach was used to select schools in two educational regions of Greece (Athens and Lakonia). School principals of the selected schools were contacted and permission was granted. Parental consent was obtained. Data were collected in quiet classroom conditions, under the supervision of the school teachers. Before completion, both oral and written instructions were provided to pupils to enhance their comprehension of the measures. Pupils were informed on their right to withdraw at any time during the process, and they were also reassured of the anonymity and confidentiality of their responses.

Statistical Analyses

A moderation analysis was performed as the literature suggests that the effect of moral disengagement on bullying depends on personal and social factors, such as gender, age, school type, and sport participation. Therefore, it was hypothesized that these personal and social factors serve as moderators in the moral disengagement–bullying relationship. Following Baron and Kenny’s (1986) and Hayes’s (2012) guidelines, moral disengagement and the demographic characteristics were the predictor variables. Gender, age, sport participation, and type of school were entered as the moderated variables. An interaction term, indicating a multiplicative association between these variables (i.e., Moral Disengagement × Gender) was created. If the incremental variance explained by the interaction term is statistically significant over and above the variance explained by the main effects of the predictor variables or, alternatively, if the beta value of the interaction term is significant, then a simple moderated effect is evident (Aiken & West, 1991; Baron & Kenny, 1986; Hayes, 2012; Hayes & Preacher, 2014). A total score of moral disengagement was used in the analyses, instead of the mechanisms to avoid excessive analyses that would influence the parsimony of the tested models.

Results

Descriptive Statistics

Of the total participants, 1,127 were males and 1,125 were females. Based on the Greek version of the revised OBVQ, 163 (7.24%) were characterized as bullies, 582 (25.84%) as victims, 238 (10.56%) as bully/victims, and 1,269 (56.34%) as outsiders. The distribution of the sample into different age groups was as follows: 538 with an age range from 11 to 12 years, 602 ranging in age from 12 to 13 years, 588 between 13 and 14 years, and 524 with an age range from 14 to 15 years. In all, 66.9% of the students were attending typical schools (i.e., 1,146 students), whereas 568 students were attending sport schools (33.1%; 538 students did not report the school they were attending). With respect to sport participation, 1,470 students (65.3%) reported participating in out of school organized sport activities. For descriptive statistics of the study’s variables, see Table 1.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics of the Study’s Variables.

	Total Sample		Gender				Age				School Type
	M	SD	Boys		Girls		Children		Adolescents		Sport		Typical
	M	SD	M	SD	M	SD	M	SD	M	SD	M	SD	M	SD
Moral disengagement	2.44	.48	2.58	.48	2.30	.43	2.35	.47	2.46	.47	2.51	.48	2.44	.47
Physical bullying	4.86	.28	4.82	.34	4.89	.20	4.84	.28	4.86	.28	4.84	.33	4.88	.24
Verbal bullying	4.69	.43	4.62	.48	4.77	.35	4.71	.37	4.69	.44	4.68	.45	4.69	.44
Physical victimization	4.77	.41	4.74	.46	4.80	.36	4.71	.46	4.79	.40	4.74	.44	4.81	.37
Verbal victimization	4.42	.66	4.46	.64	4.38	.67	4.40	.68	4.43	.65	4.37	.72	4.46	.61

Demographic Characteristics, Moral Disengagement, and Bullying

Linear regression analyses were performed to examine the unique effect of moral disengagement on different types of bullying. The results of the analyses indicated that moral disengagement was a significant predictor of physical victimization, F(1, 2250) = 6.73, p = .01, b = –.05; verbal bullying, F(1, 2205) = 191.06, p < .001, b = –.28; and physical bullying, F(1, 2250) = 103.03, p < .001, b = –.20, but not of verbal victimization. These results support the first criterion of moderation for all types of bullying behavior but not of verbal victimization.

The first set of moderation analysis assessed the moderating role of gender on the moral disengagement–bullying relationship. With respect to physical bullying, mean centered moral disengagement and gender were entered at the first step and predicted approximately 5% (adjusted R²) of the variance in physical bullying. The interaction terms (Moral Disengagement × Gender) were entered at the second step of the analysis, and significantly increased the predicted variance, adjusted R² change = .01, p < .001. The effect of the interaction term of students’ gender, β = .06, b = .05, p < .05, was significant (Table 2). No significant moderating effect emerged for physical victimization and verbal bullying.

Table 2.

Summary of Hierarchical Regression Analyses Testing for Moderation Effects.

Moderation analysis	Step	Adjusted R²	F	β	b
Physical bullying		.050	40.27*
	MD × Gender			.06	.05
Verbal bullying		.080	65.87*
	MD × Age			.02	.05

Note. Sets of moderation analyses correspond to those in the “Results” section, only significant moderation effects are reported, the β and b values reflect those of the interaction terms. MD = moral disengagement.

p < .001.

The second set of moderation analysis assessed the moderating role of grade on the moral disengagement–bullying relationship. With respect to verbal bullying, mean centered moral disengagement and grade were entered at the first step and predicted 7% (adjusted R²) of the variance in verbal bullying. The interaction terms (Moral Disengagement × Grade) were entered at the second step of the analysis, and significantly increased the predicted variance, adjusted R² change = .01, p < .05. The effect of the interaction term of students’ grade, β = .02, b = .05, p < .001, was significant (Table 2). No significant moderating effect emerged for physical victimization and physical bullying.

The third set of moderation analysis assessed the moderating role of sport participation on the moral disengagement–bullying relationship. No significant moderating effect emerged for physical victimization, and verbal and physical bullying. The fourth set of moderation analysis assessed the moderating role of school type on the moral disengagement–bullying relationship. No significant moderating effect emerged for physical victimization, and verbal and physical bullying.

Discussion

The present study was designed to investigate the moderating effect that demographic characteristics (i.e., gender, age, school type, and physical activity participation) may have on the moral disengagement–bullying behavior relationship. The results of the analyses revealed that gender moderated the effect of moral disengagement on physical bullying, and age moderated the moral disengagement–verbal bullying relationship. No significant moderating effect emerged for school type and sport participation.

With respect to the relation between moral disengagement and victimization, no significant direct effect was found between moral disengagement and verbal victimization. This finding is in line with Bacchini, Amodeo, Ciardi, Valerio, and Vitelli (1998), Bussman (2007), Gini, Pozzoli, and Hauser (2011), and Pelton, Gound, Forehand, and Brody (2004) who demonstrated a small or neutral relation between moral disengagement and aggressive behavior. This lack of association may indicate that victims of verbal bullying may perceive it as a mild form of harassment that does not require high levels of moral disengagement to occur.

In this sense, verbal bullying may be perceived by victims as a typical adolescent behavior that does not reflect the moral stance of the bully. If this is the case, it can be assumed that adolescents have embedded this bullying behavior in their everyday life interactions with their peers, and do not perceive it as an important bullying behavior. This is consistent with Gini et al. (2014), who suggested that different types of aggressive behavior are associated with different levels of moral disengagement.

A significant moderating effect emerged for gender in the moral disengagement–physical bullying relationship. The findings of the study suggest that this association was stronger for females, as compared with males. This finding contrasts with the findings of Gini et al.’s (2014) meta-analysis, reporting a nonsignificant moderating effect of gender. However, no significant moderating effect emerged for moral disengagement, physical victimization, and verbal bullying relations. These findings conform to Gini et al.’s (2014) findings, suggesting a differentiated effect of moral disengagement on various types of aggressive behavior (i.e., traditional bullying and cyberbullying). The findings of the present study indicate that there might be a differentiated effect between the subtypes of traditional bullying as a function of gender.

Furthermore, the results of the present study indicate that females perceive a stronger relation between moral disengagement and physical bullying only. This might imply that for girls, physical bullying is a more severe form of bullying that requires more lack of self-regulation. This assumption is also supported by previous evidence, indicating that females are engaging less frequently in physical bullying as compared with males (Lagerspetz, Bjorkqvist, & Peltonen, 1988; Pepler, Jiang, Craig, & Connolly, 2008; Smith & Sharp, 1994). Clearly, more evidence is warranted to investigate the moderating effect of gender with respect to the effect of moral disengagement on the different subtypes of aggressive behavior.

With respect to participants’ age, a significant moderating effect emerged in the moral disengagement–verbal bullying relation. Gini and colleagues (2014) reported that the association between moral disengagement and bullying was stronger for adolescents than for children, and highlighted the role age can play in this interaction. These findings were also supported in the present study as far as verbal bullying was considered.

Thus, it seems that the moral disengagement–verbal bullying behavior can vary as a function of age; in middle and older adolescents, this relationship is stronger as compared with children. A possible explanation of this finding might be the increase of verbal bullying behaviors with an increase in age (from childhood to middle and to older adolescence) compared with physical bullying observed in literature (Whitney & Smith, 1993). Although children engage in both verbal and physical bullying, the latter is the most frequent bullying behavior in adolescence and, thus, older adolescents perceive its association with moral disengagement as stronger. The absence of the moderating effect of age on the other moral disengagement–bullying relations might be explained, as previously, by the differentiated effect of moral disengagement on various types of traditional bullying.

Interestingly, the results of the analyses indicated no significant moderating effect, concerning the relation between moral disengagement and bullying behaviors, for sport participation and type of school. Past evidence has consistently showed that sport participation can influence the manifestation of bullying behaviors (Endresen & Olweus, 2005; Gardner et al., 2009; Jankauskiene et al., 2008). Based on this evidence, we hypothesized that sport participation and a sport-related type of school (i.e., schools with many sport participants and promoting sport participation) would foster a protective environment against bullying. However, these hypotheses were not supported in the present study. Sport participation and type of school did not moderate the moral disengagement–bullying behavior relation. These findings imply that the effect of moral disengagement on bullying is not affected by the participants’ sport participation, either in their leisure time or during school-based activities. Still, further evidence is needed to better comprehend the role of sport participation in the psychological process associated with the manifestation of bullying behaviors.

Overall, the study provided useful evidence on the moderating role of gender and age in the moral disengagement–bullying relation. However, it is not free of limitations. The study employed a cross-sectional design. As such, the findings are correlational in nature and no causal inferences can be made. Future studies should longitudinally test the trajectories of moral disengagement and bullying behaviors and investigate the effect of age, gender, and sport participation. In addition, the data mainly relied on self-reports, while objective measures of bullying behavior were not employed. Future studies will benefit from the recording of bullying behavior for short periods of time or from more frequent measures of bullying behaviors, as this will provide more reliable data about their presence.

Finally, the present study included a wide age range (i.e., approximately 5 years), covering childhood, transition to adolescence, and adolescence. Given the important developmental and psychosocial changes occurring during this time frame, it is possible that this wide age range may have distorted the data. Future studies with narrower age range may be able to provide more robust findings on the role of age, gender, and sport participation in the moral disengagement–bullying behavior relation. Nevertheless, the present study provides valuable preliminary information about the differentiated effect of moral disengagement on the various types of traditional bullying and how this can be influenced by age and gender.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Antonios K. Travlos is a professor in the Department of Sports Organization and Management, Faculty of Human Movement and Quality of Life Sciences, University of Peloponnese, Sparta, Greece. His current research interests include aggression, bullying, moral disengagement, violence in sports, anxiety, stress management, and schedule of practice.

Haralambos Tsorbatzoudis is a professor in the Faculty of Physical Education and Sport Science, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. His research interests are in motivation, anxiety, aggression, self-concept in athletes, and doping.

Vassilis Barkoukis is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Physical Education and Sport Science, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. His research interests involve the application of social-cognitive approaches in physical education, physical activity and sports, and doping.

Irene Douma is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sports Organization and Management, Faculty of Human Movement and Quality of Life Sciences, University of Peloponnese, Sparta, Greece. Her research interests are in aggression, bullying, and moral disengagement.

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