• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.35-51
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• 2006

The purpose of the present study was to identify variables for predicting types of outsiders and possible mitigating factors in bullying situations. Participants were 344 $5^{th}$, $6^{th}$ and $7^{th}$ grade students(159 boys and 185 girls). Involvement of outsiders in bullying was examined by proportion. Major findings were that; (1) Over half of the sample(65.4%) were involved in bullying by either actively reinforcing(bully-followers; 6.4%) or passively observing(bystanders; 59.0%); 34.6% were defenders of victims. (2) Multiple discriminant analysis yielded a function of 3 variables(empathy, risk burden, and prosocial moral reasoning) that was effective in classifying bully-followers, bystanders, and victim-defenders. Empathy and prosocial moral reasoning predicted victim-defenders and risk burden predicted bully-followers and bystanders.