An ethological perspective on bullying: answering Tinbergen’s four questions

Bullying is a phenomenon affecting millions of adolescents worldwide. It is often defined as a subtype of aggressive behavior characterized by intentionality, repetition, and, importantly, a power imbalance between the perpetrator(s) and the victim (Olweus, 1978, 1993). Other research highlights that bullying is not a dyadic problem but a group phenomenon occurring in a social context (Salmivalli, 1999; Swearer & Hymel, 2015). As such, bystanders can influence the bullying behavior by consciously reinforcing or defending, or simply ignoring it (Salmivalli, 2010).