Abstract
Field and Aims: Student life, which inherently should be an experience of coexistence, interaction, mutual support, and individual as well as collective growth, sometimes turns into an arena for displaying differentiation, competition, exclusion, domination, and symbolic violence. The objective of the current study was to investigate the impact of the components of Agnew’s (2014) Social Concern Theory on bullying perpetration among dormitory students at the University of Tehran.
Method: The statistical population comprised all male and female dormitory students, and the final sample size was determined to be 370370370 individuals. Data were collected using the Bullying Perpetration Questionnaire (Liu et al., 2020) and the Multidimensional Scale of Social Concern (Shadmanfaat et al., 2021; Kabiri et al., 2022; 2024). Data analysis was conducted using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) in Amos version 24 and statistical tests in SPSS version 27.
Findings and Conclusions: Results indicated that all components of social concern—including moral intuitions (β = -.292), care for others (β = -.215), desire for close ties with conventional others (β = -.246), and conformity to social norms (β = -.235)—had significant negative effects on students’ bullying behavior. Moreover, mediation analyses highlighted the importance of indirect mechanisms in reducing bullying, with care for others mediating the relationship between moral intuitions and bullying (β = -.107) and conformity to social norms mediating the relationship between desire for close ties and bullying (β = -.069). These findings align with Agnew’s theory and underscore the importance of enhancing social concern as a preventive factor in university settings. Educators and administrators can promote prosocial behavior, adherence to social norms, and ethical development among students through targeted educational and cultural programs to prevent bullying.