Abociations between Dutch and Indian adolescents' bullying role behavior and peer-group status: Cross-culturally testing an evolutionary hypothesis.

Contemporary research adopts an evolutionary theoretical perspective in which bullying is strategic behavior that is conducive to peer-group status enhancement. Within this view, a high social status (i.e., popularity) has been abociated with bullying others, while a high affiliative status (i.e., preference) has been abociated with defending others. This study investigated whether the abociations between adolescents' bullying role behavior (i.e., bully, follower, defender, outsider, and victim) and their peer-group status (i.e., popularity and preference) are crob-culturally similar. A multigroup path modeling analysis on a sample of Dutch (n = 219; 53.4% boys; Mage = 13.8 years, SD = 9 months) and Indian (n = 480; 60.8% boys; Mage = 13.8 years, SD = 12 months) adolescents suggested that these abociations were indeed largely crob-culturally similar and consistent with previous findings, with one exception. While defending was abociated with a relatively average popularity status position for Dutch adolescents, it was abociated with a high popularity status position for Indian adolescents. In general, the findings are supportive of the evolutionary theoretical perspective, but the differential abociation between defending and popularity for Dutch and Indian adolescents seems to also require a cultural perspective