Assignment Prevalence of Bullying among Young Adults at College

Running Head: SOCIOLOGY
SOCIOLOGY
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SOCIOLOGY 1
Project Title –
Prevalence of bullying among young adults (18-30 yrs) at college, working place, etc and
identify the relativeness of age, sex and educational level of perpetrator.
Project rationale
Bullying is one of the widespread phenomena which tends to have a serious effect on the
wellbeing of an individual. Young adults often face humiliation and aggressive nature from
colleagues at the office with specific characteristics like power imbalance, intentional behavior
and behavioral repetition (Cantone et al., 2015). The rationale of this research project aims to
identify the relativeness of sex, age and the level of education of the perpetrators who get
involved in bullying.
A background review of the literature
This section of the research paper will critically analyze the concept of bullying among
young adults by the evidence in the current literature as well as finding the gap in the process of
literature.
Bullying
Bullying among children is seen as repetitive harmful actions committed against one or
more adolescents. These negative acts may be physical or verbal (Hodgins, MacCurtain &
Mannix-McNamara, 2014). The implicit definition in this is that bully and victim are imbalanced
in real or perceived power. Bullying seems to be a widespread public health issue with regular
physical, verbal and psychological violence. Approximately 33% of the students have been
exposed to harassment during the school year 2007-2008 and 25% have registered harassment

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every day (Ariza-Montes et al., 2017). Bullying among young people is related to the
psychological sequelae of short and long periods. That may include problems of psychology,
behavior, alcohol abuse, academic problems, and issues of protection that can continue in
adulthood. According to Brewer et al., (2014), young adults are often humiliated and faced by
bullying at their college and even at the workplace. Many instances of bullying des not even
have proper reasons behind the actions of the perpetrators.
Types of bullying
There are several different forms of bullying that children and adults may encounter,
while others are more subtle. Hitting, punching, tripping, grabbing or dragging or damaging
things are part of physical bullying. Verbal bullying includes personal insults, threats, mocking,
harassment, derogatory or racial comments or misuse of the word (Pitney, Weuve & Mazerolle,
2016). Social bullying is typically harder to detect and can be done behind the targeted person,
also known as hidden bullying. It is intended to damage the social image of others and / or to
humiliate people. According to the current data, both men and women can be the perpetrators of
Bullying. The research studies identified that percent of the male perpetrator is higher than that
of female, who are majorly the victims of bullying.
Social bullying may involve gossip, facially or physically negative, threatening or
disdainful looks, playing mean jokes to embarrass and humiliate, unintentionally imitating others
and encouraging others to exclude others from society, undermining someone else's social
popularity or social acceptance (Pilch & Turska, 2015).
Cyberbullying may be accessible or secret, through digital technology and applications such as
social media, instant messages, emails, Web pages, and other electronic networks, for example,
computers and smartphones(Hartin, Birks & Lindsay, 2018).

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Factors influencing the prevalence of bullying among the perpetrators
Peer victimization or pulling can be recognized as a universal phenomenon with several
detrimental effects. It is a way of aggressive behavior where a person causes another individual
any discomfort or injury with any motive. According to Niolon et al., (2015), some of the factors
associated with bullying include psychological factors, family factors, socio-economic
environment, and the influence of media and college factors. The psychiatric disorder includes
arrogance, the instance of pride, jealousy and the tendency to impose will an opinion over others.
Psychological disorders among perpetrators are one of the most important factors that increase
the risk of bullying behavior due to mental illness (Turner et al., 2014). The individual with
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder within the workplace or at a college environment is at the
risk of showing bullying nature to their peers. The research studies indicate that perpetrators
often want to control the weaker individual within their environment by the use of power (Hidzir
et al., 2017). Conflicts among families targeting indulgent and permissive behavior influences
children to bully other students in college. Socio-economic factors like financial shortages are
among the major factors influencing the prevalence of bullying. Although the context of poverty
does not come up with violence, it is often considered as the factor of consideration while
increasing the chances of the emergence of bullying bi perpetrators (Chadwick & Travaglia,
2017). Finally, the internet and the social networks together with violent movies and video
games influence the prevalence of bullying among perpetrators who find these games and
movies exciting and the best way to bust out there emotions and accumulated energy to a weak
peer.
Gap in literature