Psychological Development and Education ›› 2021, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (2): 298-304.doi: 10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2021.02.17

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How Does Classroom Environment Impact the Victims' Adjustments? Healthy Context Paradox and Its Mechanisms

LIU Xiaowei1, PAN Bin1, LI Tengfei1, ZHANG Wenxin1, Christina Salmivalli1,2   

  1. 1. School of Psychology, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250014;
    2. Department of Psychology, University of Turku, Turku 20023
  • Published:2021-03-23

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Abstract: The “Healthy Context Paradox” is defined as the phenomenon that victims are more likely to be maladjusted in “healthy” contexts, such as classrooms where level of victimization is relatively low, where the proportion of victims had decreased over time and where an anti-bullying program was successfully implemented. In the existing literatures, there are two possible mechanisms explaining for this phenomenon, i.e, the interpersonal process and the cognitive process hypotheses. The interpersonal mechanism highlights that healthy context might cause peers' more negative evaluation towards the victims and reduce victims' friendship opportunities, and such maladaptive interpersonal relationships in turn worsen victims' adjustment. The cognitive mechanism posits that healthy context has a negative impact on victims' maladjustment through influencing on upward social comparison and passive attribution style. Finally, we discussed the generalizability of healthy context paradox in Chinese culture context, pointed out future research directions and proposed practical implications.

Key words: bullying victimization, classroom context, healthy context paradox

CLC Number: 

  • B844
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