The Influence of Emotional Reaction on Help Seeking by Victims of School Bullying

Research has begun to focus on how victims of school bullying cope, but there is still little under-standing of why pupils will cope in one particular way and not another. This paper aimed to examine the effects of gender, stage of schooling, frequency of victimisation, and different emotions (anger, vengeance, self-pity, indifference, and helplessness) upon the social support that children report using. Questionnaires were completed by 6,282 Maltese schoolchildren between 9 and 14 years of age. Analyses revealed that specific patterns of emotion and victimisa-tion predict pupil reports of using certain sources of social support. Results are discussed in rela-tion to possible intervention, future research needs, and implications for the theoretical framework used. Being bullied at school is a distressing event (Sharp, 1995) experienced by up to 27% of children during any given term (Boulton & Underwood, 1992; Whitney & Smith, 1993). The effects of bullying upon victims include increased levels of depression an