Aggressive Behavior In Schools: A Literature Review

Introduction

Aggression is an issue every individual has to deal with many times in their life. Nowadays aggressive behaviour in schools, which is commonly called bullying, is a topic strongly discussed by media and researchers for its impact on significant factors like academic achievement, mental health and interpersonal relationships (Wang, Ianotti & Nansel, 2009). A study conducted by the Angus Reid Institute in 2015 found that 47% of the Canadian adults think that bullying is a serious issue, which should gain more attention.

The literature review at hand aims to assess the central question: to what extent can conformity explain bullying in school? In order to answer this question, an explanation of aggressive behaviour in terms of bullying

There are two different types of aggression: Proactive aggression and reactive aggression. Proactive aggression, which is also called instrumental aggression, describes a circumstance, in which an individual executes aggressive behaviour in order to reach a certain aim. In contrast, reactive aggression occurs in response to a specific negative cue, which triggers aggression inside the concerned person (Kassin, Fein & Markus, 2011). Bullying behaviour can be executed in an either verbal, physical or psychological way, for example by calling someone names, hitting the victim, or exposing him or her to embarrassing situations (Olweus, 1997; Wang, Ianotti & Nansel, 2009). Furthermore, Olweus (1997) defines bullying by three core characteristics, which consist of the intention to hurt another individual in an either psychological or physiological way, an inequality of power among the bully and the bullied person and the repetition of aggressive behaviour against the victim, which is mainly consistent with the findings of Volk, Dane and Marini (2014), who evaluated and redefined Olweus approach. Volk, Dane and Marini (2014) agree on the aspects of power imbalance and harming another person, whereas they do not regard the circumstance of repetition as crucial, but instead proposed goal-directedness, which implies proactive rather than reactive aggression, as a significant

The behaviour of active bullies can be attributed to internal aspects like their specific characteristics, which are strongly influenced by their upbringing, whereas the actions of peripheral bullies mostly arise from peer pressure and the desire of being consistent with the perceived group norm, which leads them to conform. All in all, conformity can not explain the origins of bullying in a single person, but the development of conformative peer