Author(s): Mechthild Schäfer*, Klaus Starch, Manuel Stoiber and Hannes Letsch
When asked individually, a majority of pupils perceive bullying as wrong, antisocial and pronounce the necessity to do something against it. However as part of their class nine out of ten are attributed a distinct role in the bullying process by peers. Moral knowledge or competence adds little to differentiate these bullying roles, but moral motivation does. Moral motivation and in special moral disengagement is linked to a context, to the class. It is argued, that bullying needs to be defined as a strong situation to overcome the effects of group-dynamics predicted by socialpsychology.
