The Impact of Personal Values, Gender Stereotypes, and School Climate on Homophobic Bullying: a Multilevel Analysis

Abstract

Abstract Introduction Schools are among the most homophobic social contexts, where students who do not conform to gender norms are at high risk of stigma and discrimination. Method Using a multilevel approach, the aim of the current was to examine whether adolescents’ engagement in homophobic bullying behavior was associated with personal values and stereotyped victim-blaming attributions at individual level, and perceptions of school as a community and frequency of teachers’ reaction to bullying incidents at classroom level. Data were collected in 2010. The sample consisted of 2718 Italian middle and high school students (53.2% females; mean age = 15.36, SD = .85) from 144 classrooms. Results Results showed that self-transcendence values reduced the risk of engaging in homophobic bullying, whereas both self-enhancement values and stereotyped victim-blaming attributions were positively associated with homophobic bullying. At classroom level, only negative perceptions of school as a community had a unique positive contribution on homophobic bullying, over and above other individual and contextual factors. Two cross-level interactions were found, indicating that self-transcendence values had a significant effect in decreasing homophobic bullying in classrooms where teacher support was perceived as low, whereas stereotyped victim-blaming attributions had a significant effect in increasing homophobic bullying in classrooms where teacher support was perceived as high. Conclusion These findings provide further support to the social-ecological perspective as a useful guiding framework for understanding the complexity of factors predicting homophobic bullying. Policy Implications Efforts should be made to develop clear anti-bullying school policies explicitly dealing with the issue of homophobic bullying.