Adolescent Victims Tend to Become Bullies Over Time—Except in Highly Autonomy-Supportive Classrooms: A One-Year Randomized Control Trial

Victimization—being the target of bullying—is a difficult-to-cope-with trauma. One way a victim can cope is to become a bully themselves. In the present paper, we focused on the in-school development of bullying and victimization, and also on how teachers can prevent bullying and victimization from occurring in the first place. We proposed and tested a reciprocal effects model in which victimization and bullying positively facilitated each other over time. We also proposed and tested a model in which teacher participation in an autonomy-supportive teaching workshop (experimental condition) would create a classroom climate that was so supportive as to prevent bullying, victimization, and the facilitating effects of bullying and victimization on each other. In a four-wave, within-person survey study, 905 South Korean secondary students (52.4% females; Mage = 16.4) from 33 PE classes completed the same questionnaire at the beginning, middle, and end of the first semester and again at the end of the second semester. We tested for reciprocal effects using a random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM). In the control condition, victimization prospectively predicted subsequent bullying (Β = .23, p = .029), but bullying did not prospectively predict subsequent victimization (Β = .08, p = .223). In the experimental condition, neither victimization nor bully predicted the subsequent experience of the other. These findings suggest that adolescent victims tend to become bullies over time—unless they are in a highly autonomy-supportive classroom.