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Bullying, Cyberbullying: Bully, Victim and Bystanders

Bullying, Cyberbullying: Bully, Victim and Bystanders

The impact of startle reactivity to unpredictable threat on the relation between bullying victimization and

Milena Radoman¹, Fikayo D Akinbo², Kathleen M Rospenda²

¹Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA; Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, and the Graduate Program in Neuroscience, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.

Journal of Psychiatric Research

|September 15, 2019

Abstract

Background:

Being bullied has detrimental effects on mental health functioning. Individuals who are highly reactive to unpredictable threats (U-threat) may be particularly vulnerable to the negative consequences of being bullied. For them, persistent, unpredictable bullying likely elicits chronic anticipatory anxiety and depression. The aim of the present study was to examine the main and interactive effects of aversive reactivity to U-threat and past-year bullying victimization on current anxiety and depressive symptoms.

Methods:

Seventy-one young adults (ages 17-19) completed a well-validated threat-of-shock task used to probe reactivity to both U-threat and predictable threat (P-threat). Startle eyeblink potentiation was recorded to index aversive responding.

Results:

We found a main effect of bullying, such that individuals with more bullying experience exhibited greater anxiety and depressive symptoms than individuals with less bullying experience. There was also a bullying by U-threat reactivity interaction such that among individuals with high reactivity to U-threat, more bullying experience was associated with more anxiety and depressive symptoms. Among individuals with low U-threat reactivity, there was no association between bullying and internalizing symptoms. There were no main or interactive effects involving reactivity to P-threat.

Conclusions:

Together, these results suggest that among individuals who are bullied, those who are sensitive to U-threat are particularly vulnerable to depression and anxiety in young adulthood. These individuals may represent a high-risk group for the development of internalizing psychopathology.

Keywords:

Anxiety Bullying victimization Depression Predictable threat Startle reactivity Unpredictable threat

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