Understanding the relationship between religious coping and psychological wellbeing is important when considering adolescent wellbeing, particularly in the context of contemporary Irish post-primary education. It is also important to distinguish between religious affiliation and the ways in which adolescents use religious coping strategies. This study examined the relationship between religious coping and psychological wellbeing among post-primary students in Ireland, with particular attention to Catholic and non-religious adolescents. Religious coping was conceptualised in terms of positive and negative coping strategies used to interpret and respond to stress, while psychological wellbeing was operationalised using Ryff’s eudaimonic framework. Data were collected from 110 students aged 15–19 years using the Brief RCOPE and the Scales of Psychological Wellbeing. Positive religious coping was significantly associated with higher psychological wellbeing among Catholic participants, while negative religious coping was significantly associated with lower psychological wellbeing among non-religious participants. No significant differences were observed between Catholic and non-religious participants in overall psychological wellbeing or negative religious coping. However, because the associations between religious coping and psychological wellbeing were examined within groups rather than formally compared between groups, the findings do not establish that these associations differed significantly between Catholic and non-religious adolescents. The findings suggest that different forms of religious coping may be associated with psychological wellbeing in different ways within the groups examined. Overall, the study highlights the importance of distinguishing between religious affiliation and religious coping when examining the relationship between religion and adolescent wellbeing. The findings contribute to the literature by examining positive and negative religious coping within the context of contemporary Irish post-primary education. They highlight the need for further research using larger samples and formal between-group comparisons to better understand the relationship between religious coping and adolescent psychological wellbeing.
Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) refers to a psychological mechanism that is aimed at establishing and maintaining social hierarchies and unequal relationships. Although there is significant overlap in the constructs of SDO and bullying, there is a limited understanding on what role social dominance orientation plays in bullying. To identify the role of social dominance orientation in bullying behaviours. We systematically searched PsycINFO, PsycArticles, Scopus and Web of Science and reviewed existing peer-reviewed literature on social dominance orientation and bullying (online and offline) published between 2014 and November 2025. An initial total of 839 articles were retrieved and following the screening process only 9 articles were included in the review. The results demonstrate that there is limited empirical research that has investigated the role of SDO in bullying behaviours, and much of the research employs quantitative cross-sectional research designs. The limited findings suggest that SDO is associated with a range of bullying contexts - both perpetration and victimisation, and bystander behaviour. However, further research on the role of SDO, along with more robust analyses, are needed before we can go as far as to suggest social dominance theory as a theoretical explanation for bullying.
Bullying is increasingly understood as a social process in which peers influence whether it persists. Anti-bullying policies and programs often encourage bystanders to intervene directly, yet direct defending can carry social costs for defenders, and evidence that it reduces later victimization is mixed. Some interventions already target the peer rewards that sustain bullying, but participant-role classifications tend to absorb deliberate non-reinforcement into outsider behavior or passive bystanding. This paper argues that withdrawing social reinforcement, the deliberate withholding of social rewards that peers confer on bullying, such as attention, approval, amplification, or audience participation, should be conceptualized as a distinct bystander response. This conceptual analysis draws on the social-ecological framework, participant role theory, social cognitive theory, and evidence that the outsider category is internally heterogeneous. Withdrawing social reinforcement is functionally positive when it reflects a refusal to endorse bullying and reduces the social rewards available to the student who bullies. It differs from uninvolved passivity in intent and social function, and from indirect defending in primary target, because these responses act on different points in the social process of bullying. When enacted collectively, it may also signal reduced peer endorsement of bullying and shift perceived peer norms. Helpful bystander responding should not be defined only by direct intervention. Bystanders can also target the social rewards that sustain bullying, and responses grouped as passive bystanding differ in whether they sustain or withhold those rewards. Future research should test whether withdrawing social reinforcement can be reliably distinguished from uninvolved passivity and indirect defending, and whether it reduces reinforcement for students who bully. Withdrawing social reinforcement requires less public confrontation than direct defending, offering students who cannot or will not confront the student who bullies another way to respond. Schools can teach this method as an explicit option alongside upstanding.
Bullying exposure has been consistently associated with elevated psychological stress among school-aged children; however, limited evidence exists regarding these associations within non-clinical, school-based populations in low- and middle-income settings. To examine the association between bullying-related involvement and psychological stress among school-aged children in Indonesia. This cross-sectional study included 2,781 school-aged children aged 8–13 years recruited from eight schools using a school-based convenience sampling approach. Participants completed anonymous questionnaires. Psychological stress was assessed using an Indonesian-adapted version of the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10), while bullying-related involvement was assessed using an adapted 20-item questionnaire based on Putri (2009). The questionnaire covered physical, verbal, relational, and cyber forms of bullying-related behaviors and experiences and included items addressing perpetration, victimization, and knowledge of bullying-related behavior. Stress scores were analyzed as a continuous measure, with descriptive categories used for non-clinical interpretation. Pearson and Spearman correlation analyses and multiple linear regression were conducted, with age and gender included as covariates. Pearson correlation analysis showed a significant positive association between bullying-related involvement and psychological stress (r = .18, p < .001), with similar findings in Spearman analysis (ρ = 0.19, p < .001). Multiple linear regression indicated that bullying-related involvement was significantly associated with higher psychological stress after controlling for age and gender (β = 0.20, p < .001; R² = 0.05). Bullying-related involvement was associated with higher psychological stress among school-aged children in this non-clinical population. Given the cross-sectional design, reliance on self-report measures, and modest explanatory power, the findings should be interpreted as preliminary evidence rather than evidence of causality or clinical diagnostic utility. The findings support greater attention to psychological stress among children involved in bullying-related behaviors in school settings. Future research should use longitudinal, multilevel, and multi-informant approaches to clarify temporal relationships and contextual influences.
This study examined associations between bullying victimisation, school belonging, teacher support, and life satisfaction among adolescents using PISA 2022 data. It tested whether belonging mediated the bullying-life satisfaction association and teacher support moderated this association. This cross-sectional secondary analysis included 27,192 Spanish 15-year-old students (49.8
