Longitudinal Effect of Perceived Norms on Children's Defending Against Bullying: Race as a Defining Factor in Children's Proximal Reference Peer Group

Despite protective functions of defending, it tends to decline in late childhood. Drawing on social identity theory and racial socialization perspectives, this study examines how race shapes which peer norms children attend to and how these norms influence defending over time. Specifically, we examined whether perceptions of same-race and other-race classmates’ defending predicted changes in children’s own defending, and how these effects varied by race and classroom racial composition. Participants were 564 Black and 860 White 4th and 5th graders from 91 classrooms across 13 public elementary schools in Southeastern U.S. who were followed across fall, winter, and spring. Results from latent growth modeling showed that the effect of perceived defending among same-race and other-race classmates on children’s own defending depended on race and classroom composition. Among Black youth, perceiving same-race classmates as highly engaged in defending and other-race classmates as highly disengaged in defending were associated with increases in defending over time if they were in classrooms with a high proportion of same-race peers. White youth who perceived same-race classmates as highly engaged in defending and other-race classmates as highly disengaged in defending were more likely to defend in fall if they were in classrooms with a low proportion of same-race peers. However, these effects were no longer significant by spring. Taken together, this study shows that defending is a socially embedded behavior, shaped by racial identity and classroom context, calling for new avenues for identity-sensitive bullying prevention.