Roles in violent interactions in early adolescence: Relations with personality traits, friendship and gender

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the relations between roles in violent interactions and personality traits (congruent to dimensions of Big Seven lexical model), number of friends, and gender. The study was conducted on a sample of 1095 elementary school students from Serbia (51.4% female), aged 11-14. The results revealed that membership in the victims group corresponds to smaller number of friends, low Extraversion, high Neuroticism and Conscientiousness and male gender, while higher Aggressiveness, Negative and Positive Valence, lower Neuroticism, and male gender increase the odds of membership in the bullies group. The role of bully-victims corresponds to smaller number of friends, higher Negative Valence and Neuroticism, and male gender. The results point to differences between roles in violent interaction with regard to patterns of personality traits and social behavior.