The role of strains in negative emotions and bullying behaviors of school-aged children

Abstract Bullying has detrimental consequences among school aged children. As a response to the need to understand the causes of bullying, the current study relied on General Strain Theory to assess the impacts of strains on bullying behaviors for adolescents. Furthermore, this study was one of the first to investigate the mediator role of negative emotions when the consequence of strains was bullying perpetration. The international dataset, Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) study 2009–2010 cycle, served as a source of this study's sample which provided a U.S. based nationally representative sample (n = 12,642, students aged 10–17). Results indicated that peer victimization predicted bullying perpetration through the mediating effect of negative emotion. Experiencing more negative emotion was associated with comparatively more bullying behaviors in adolescents (p = 0.006). In addition, immigrant youth were less likely than native-born individuals to bully others (p