Victimized adolescents' aggression in cliques with different victimization norms: The healthy context paradox or the peer contagion hypothesis?

Bullying victimization has been linked to an elevated risk of both internalizing and externalizing problems, yet the mechanisms underlying these associations, especially from the perspective of naturally occurring informal cliques, are not well understood. Based on two contrasting hypotheses from the healthy context paradox and the peer contagion hypothesis, the current 2-year longitudinal study (a) investigated the interaction effects of individual victimization (i.e., physical, verbal, and relational forms) and clique victimization norms on their reactive-proactive aggression and (b) examined whether they were distinct to these effects on depressive symptoms. Both self-reported and peer-nominated surveys were administrated to 691 junior high school students (55.6% boys; M = 12.74, SD = 0.43 years) who were identified from 153 cliques (M = 5.08, SD = 1.89) using a social cognitive map, at two time points 2 years apart. Multilevel modeling indicated that both physical and relational victims (except verbal victims) at baseline committed more reactive forms of aggression (not proactive forms) in cliques with lower victimization norms 2 years later. Similarly, physical victims in lower-victimization cliques reported more depressive symptoms 2 years later. Additionally, these significant results were found in self-reported forms of victimization, but not peer-nominated forms. These findings confirm the healthy context paradox in both individual internalizing and externalizing problems in clique contexts, and elaborate this paradox on different forms of victimization, which provide a more nuanced understanding and have important implications in the field of anti-bullying interventions.