Bullying perpetration and HEXACO personality: Examining between- and within-person longitudinal associations

Previous findings indicate the utility of the HEXACO model in understanding the personality traits associated with bullying perpetration. However, these studies are all cross-sectional, limiting the understanding of how bullying and HEXACO personality develop alongside one another across adolescence. Therefore, we examined between- and within-person longitudinal associations between bullying and the HEXACO traits in a sample of 392 youth ( M age = 11.88 at Wave 1; SD = 1.42; 49.5% boys) across 3 years of development using random intercept cross-lagged panel models. As expected, we found a between-person association between higher bullying and lower Honesty-Humility, as well as within-person, within-time associations between bullying and lower Honesty-Humility. Unexpectedly, we did not find within-person cross-lagged paths. Our findings suggest that individuals higher on exploitative traits (i.e., lower Honesty-Humility) are more likely to be higher on bullying perpetration. In addition, individuals whose exploitative traits increase are likely to concurrently increase on bullying perpetration. Our findings highlight the importance of understanding developmental processes at the between- and within-person levels. Our results suggest that anti-bullying interventions might benefit from taking note of individuals who possess exploitative personality traits.