Bullying is a serious concern worldwide and may compromise development for all involved. Growing evidence suggests that bullying may be viewed as a goal-oriented strategy to achieve prestige and power or as a form of proactive aggression serving personal goals. The current paper reports a meta-analysis of studies examining social goals-bullying associations in youth. In addition to reporting an overall weighted-average effect size, we compared the relative strength of associations of specific goals (status/dominance vs. antisocial/prosocial) with bullying, and examined goal type (situation-specific vs. global), gender, and age as potential moderators. A thorough literature search identified 45 eligible effect sizes from 16 independent samples (14 sources). On average, bullying behavior was related significantly to social goal setting. Specifically, youth who displayed more bullying behavior were more likely to endorse status/power goals (r = .16, 95% CI [.11, .21]) and antisocial goals (r = .27, 95% CI [.04, .48]) and to disregard prosocial goals (r = −.10, 95% CI [−.19, −.02]) than their peers who displayed less bullying behavior. None of the included moderators related to differences in the weighted average effect size. The findings support conceptualization of bullying as instrumental behavior aimed at achieving personal goals. They also advance the understanding of motivations for bullying by indicating that, for example, goals for status/power among peers and goals of antisocial nature (e.g., revenge goals) are both related to the risk of bullying. Implications for basic research and bullying interventions are discussed.

中文翻译：

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青少年欺凌和社会目标设定：荟萃分析

欺凌是世界范围内的一个严重问题，可能会损害所有相关人员的发展。越来越多的证据表明，欺凌可能被视为一种以目标为导向的策略来获得声望和权力，或者被视为一种为个人目标服务的主动攻击形式。目前的论文报告了一项对青年社会目标欺凌协会研究的荟萃分析。除了报告总体加权平均效应大小外，我们还比较了特定目标（地位/支配地位与反社会/亲社会）与欺凌的关联强度，并检查了目标类型（特定情况与全球）、性别、和年龄作为潜在的主持人。彻底的文献检索从 16 个独立样本（14 个来源）中确定了 45 个符合条件的效应量。平均而言，欺凌行为与社会目标设定显着相关。具体来说，r = .16, 95% CI [.11, .21]) 和反社会目标 ( r = .27, 95% CI [.04, .48]) 并无视亲社会目标 ( r = −.10, 95% CI [−.19, −.02]) 比他们表现出较少欺凌行为的同龄人。所包含的调节因子均与加权平均效应大小的差异无关。研究结果支持将欺凌概念化为旨在实现个人目标的工具性行为。他们还通过指出，例如，同伴之间的地位/权力目标和反社会性质的目标（例如，报复目标）都与欺凌的风险有关，从而促进了对欺凌动机的理解。讨论了对基础研究和欺凌干预的影响。