Varieties of Childhood Bullying: Values,

Emotion Processes, and Social Competence

William F. Arsenio, Yeshiva University and Elizabeth A. Lemerise,
Western Kentucky University

Abstract
Understanding the nature of bullies and bullying is of considerable theoretical and
practical importance. We offer a commentary on a recent debate on this topic between
Sutton, Smith, and Swettenham (1999a, 1999b) and Crick and Dodge (1999). In this
commentary, we first summarize the main points of the debate, including alternative
views of bullies as social inadequates versus Machiavellian schemers. Then we clarify
some unresolved issues concerning the nature and limits of social competence and the
roles of values in both social competence and in bullying. Finally, it is argued that
variations in children’s emotion processes, such as emotionality and emotion regula-
tion, also may underlie some of the individual differences that have been found in
empathy, social information processing, and in reactive (‘hot-headed’) and proactive
(‘cold-blooded’) aggressive and bullying patterns.

Keywords: Bullying; aggression; emotion processes; moral values

In a recent debate in this journal on the nature of bullies and bullying (Crick & Dodge,
1999; Sutton, Smith, & Swettenham, 1999a, 1999b), Sutton et al. argued against the
‘popular stereotype of a bully, supported by theories based on the social skills deficit
model . . . of a powerful but oafish person with little understanding of others’ (Sutton
et al., 1999a, p. 117). Instead they proposed that at least some bullies may have
quite well-developed social cognitive and theory of mind skills which the bullies
then use to manipulate and dominate others. Crick and Dodge (1999) responded to this
critique by noting that their social information processing (SIP) model does ‘not pre-
clude the possibility that skilled processing at a particular step predicts aggressive
responding’ (p. 128), while still rejecting Sutton and colleagues’ implication that ‘com-
petent social cognitions can result in incompetent behaviors’ (Crick & Dodge, 1999,
p. 131).
As both groups of authors note, this debate is important for pragmatic reasons. First,
Olweus (1994) found that 15% of Norwegian school children are involved in
bully/victim problems; similar and even higher prevalence rates have been found in
other countries including the United States (Perry, Kusel, & Perry, 1988) and Great
Britain (Whitney & Smith, 1993). Moreover, these patterns have damaging long term

Corresponding author: Dr. William F. Arsenio, Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Yeshiva
University, Rousso Building, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461, USA; E-mail: warsenio@
wesleyan.edu; Telephone: (718) 430-3951; Fax: (718) 430-3960.

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2001. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street,
Malden, MA 02148, USA.
60 William F. Arsenio and Elizabeth A. Lemerise
consequences for both bullies and their victims (Olweus, 1994). Consequently, a
second issue focuses on intervention: without a clear and accurate picture of the nature
of bullying, potentially complex and expensive interventions will either be ineffective,
or, at best, less effective than desired.
Given the theoretical and pragmatic significance of this debate, we believe that it
is important to clarify several unresolved issues raised in this exchange. Specifically,
we argue that some of the differences expressed in the debate stem from: a) the dif-
ferent explicit and implicit definitions of social competence used by these two groups;
and b) Sutton and colleagues’ incomplete understanding of how the social informa-
tion processing model accounts for different types of aggression and bullying. We also
propose, however, that Sutton and colleagues’ clear attempt to inject empathy and
‘moral values’ into the discussion on bullying highlights important limitations of
current versions of the SIP model, including the minimal role of emotions and the
confusion between ‘value free’ research and research that avoids examining children’s
own moral values regarding aggression and bullying. In order to address these issues,
we begin with a brief summary of the major points raised by both groups, followed
by our commentary on the debate.

Sutton, Smith, and Swettenham’s Argument

Sutton and colleagues’ argument focuses on the claim that ‘many bullies may in fact be
skilled manipulators, not social inadequates’ (Sutton et al., 1999a, p. 118). Conse-
quently, they begin by providing a critique of ‘social skills deficit’ models and, in par-
ticular, the social information processing (SIP) model proposed by Dodge and
colleagues (Dodge, Pettit, McClaskey, & Brown, 1986) and updated by Crick and
Dodge (1994). In the SIP model, biases or deficits in one (or more) of six different steps
(encoding, interpretation, goal selection, response generation, response selection, and
behavioral enactment) are seen as leading to children’s aggressive behavior. In describ-
ing this model, Sutton et al. summarize several studies indicating that aggressive chil-
dren are more likely to form hostile schemas and expectations regarding their social
worlds and to attribute more hostile intentions to others than their peers.
Although Sutton et al. acknowledge the importance of much of this research, they
also believe that these ‘deficit’ models may lead researchers to underestimate several
unique characteristics of the social contexts in which bullies operate. Specifically, they
focus on research indicating that most acts of bullying involve other witnesses (e.g.,
Pepler & Craig, 1995), and they also note an increasing interest in examining less
physical and more subtle, indirect forms of bullying (strangely, they do not cite any
of Crick and colleagues’ extensive research on relational aggression; e.g., Crick, 1996;
Crick & Bigbee, 1998). Given both the social nature of bullying and the more subtle,
indirect forms of bullying, they argue that effective bullying may require a sophisti-
cated ability to manipulate psychologically both victims and the larger peer ‘audi-
ences’ who could either reject or accept such acts of bullying.
Instead of viewing all bullies as deficient in social skills and abilities, Sutton et al.
propose that some bullies may perceive their social worlds quite accurately, and use
that knowledge to their own personal advantage. Moreover, according to these authors,
one important avenue by which these abilities are formed involves the emergence of
a theory of mind (TOM), that is children’s abilities to attribute mental states, includ-
ing beliefs, desires, and intentions, to both themselves and others, and to use that
knowledge to anticipate and understand behavior. The development of ‘second order’
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 Varieties of Childhood Bullying 61
and ‘higher order’ beliefs, in particular, might prove useful to bullies: children who
not only know how others are thinking (‘he’s afraid’), but also know what others are
thinking about these thoughts (‘he knows I’m looking to see if he is scared’) may have
an advantage in executing effective bullying behaviors.
According to Sutton et al., research on TOM abilities will help to distinguish
between the ‘oaf’ and ‘Machiavellian’ views of bullies. The social skills deficit model,
they argue, would predict that bullies score lower on TOM tasks, given bullies’ rela-
tive inability to evaluate social cues and formulate socially competent responses. By
contrast, based on their own pilot data, Sutton et al. would expect that at least some
bullies would do well on TOM tasks.
Despite Sutton and colleagues’ characterization of the SIP model as focusing on
social skills deficits, in at least one place in the article they show a clear awareness
that the SIP model has been used to address both information processing deficits, as
well as response evaluations that have little to do with misperceiving basic aspects of
the social world. Yet, they still go on to reject the SIP model as being inadequate to
account for their model of socially-skilled bullies.

Crick and Dodge’s Response

In their response, Crick and Dodge focus on several issues, including: a) the need for
a clearer definition of bullying, and b) the fact that the available evidence on children’s
role-taking (which they see as roughly equivalent to the TOM perspective) indicates
that aggression and bullying are empirically associated with distinctly lower levels of
such abilities. They further assert that TOM is not likely to contribute to the differen-
tial prediction of bullying (given that TOM skills also are associated with prosocial
behavior). Perhaps most importantly, however, they argue that Sutton et al. seem to
have misunderstood some of the basic features of the SIP model. ‘The SIP framework
. . . does not require that aggressive behavior occurs as a function of processing
deficits. . . . Rather the key formulation of the SIP framework is that chronic process-
ing styles (. . . called biases simply because they are tendencies to respond in a con-
sistent manner in response to ambiguous stimuli) account for chronic patterns in
aggression. Considering the perspective of a partner in a social exchange is one pos-
sible step in SIP’ (Crick & Dodge, 1999, p. 128). In fact, Crick and Dodge seem to
accept the possibility that someone could demonstrate sophisticated social under-
standing at a particular step in their model and yet still engage in higher than norma-
tive levels of bullying and aggression.
Other aspects of both groups’ arguments, however, indicate that their differences
are more than just the result of a simple misunderstanding regarding the details of the
SIP model. Even though Crick and Dodge initially seem to accept the notion that some
bullies could be especially proficient at certain information processing steps, they con-
clude by strongly rejecting any claim that competent social cognition could produce
incompetent (bullying) behaviors. Their reasons for rejecting this claim, however, are
never really specified.

Overview of Our Commentary on the Debate

We agree with Crick and Dodge that TOM explanations are not likely to be very
helpful for understanding the unique nature of bullying. Some children may have
distorted or incomplete TOMs that may lead them to become aggressive (similar to
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62 William F. Arsenio and Elizabeth A. Lemerise
reactive aggression, Dodge & Coie, 1987). But having a sophisticated TOM can lead
to highly prosocial behavior or to the kind of bullying Sutton et al. describe. Having
a ‘superior’TOM says nothing about how that knowledge will be utilized. In this sense,
the model of a proactive aggressor described by Crick and Dodge (1996, 1999) is an
improvement; their model at least begins to distinguish between the accuracy of social
cognitions and the uses to which those social cognitions are put.
We believe that the deeper differences in these groups’ views of bullying involve
three unresolved and largely unstated issues. One issue is that Sutton et al. and Crick
and Dodge appear to be using two different underlying definitions of social compe-
tence. Essentially, Sutton et al. focus more narrowly on social competence as a child’s
success at attaining his or her individual goals. In contrast, Crick and Dodge take a
somewhat broader view of social competence that includes the judgments of others,
including adults and the wider peer group, although their definition of social compe-
tence is stated less explicitly. A second related issue (also unresolved) is whether
social competence, especially as it applies to children’s bullying and other aggressive
behaviors, can be defined in a ‘value-free’ way. We will argue below that bullying and
social competence can not be understood without reference to traditional moral
issues involving fairness, other’s welfare, and refraining from harming others for
personal gain (see, e.g., Turiel, 1983; 1998). And, surprisingly, despite their seemingly
narrow definition of social competence, Sutton et al. raise similar concerns about
the ‘value-free’ nature of the SIP model’s explanation of bullying. Finally, although
Sutton et al. raise the question of whether bullies lack empathy, we will argue further
that individual differences in emotion processes (e.g., emotionality, emotion regula-
tion, and empathy) may contribute to variations in children’s thinking about poten-
tially conflictual situations and thus to different forms of coping, including aggression
and bullying.

What is Social Competence?

At least part of the debate between Sutton et al. and Crick and Dodge can be attrib-
uted to the lack of consensus between them as to what constitutes ‘social competence.’
In some sense, this is not surprising since there is no clear consensus in our field on
how to define this construct (see Rose-Krasnor, 1997 for an excellent review of the
various definitions). On the one hand, it seems that Sutton and colleagues are taking
a somewhat narrow view of social competence as reflecting one’s success or effec-
tiveness at realizing one’s goals in a given context. Crick and Dodge’s (1999) defini-
tion of social competence is less explicitly stated, but it is clear that in their case, social
competence involves the judgments of others, including individuals outside the imme-
diate peer context (e.g., other peers and adults). Thus a child may very effectively
realize his/her goals by pushing another out of the way so as to get the last swing,
which would conform to a narrow, ‘effectiveness’ definition of social competence.
However, this behavior may be seen as less effective/competent (and probably hostile)
by other children and/or adults (parents and teachers). This suggests that others’ views
help to define what is socially competent, as implied by Crick and Dodge. We would
argue that ‘others’ views’ are probably based on shared standards concerning what is
‘fair’ or ‘right.’ Below we examine SIP research for evidence of such standards and
explore whether there are individual differences in such standards and their applica-
tion that relate to bullying and other forms of aggression.
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2001 Social Development, 10, 1, 2001
 Varieties of Childhood Bullying 63

Reactive and Proactive Aggression

Much of Sutton and colleagues’ initial criticism of the SIP model of bullying and
aggression focuses on the notion that bullying is the result of children’s inaccurate and
distorted understanding of social cues. In fact, in their early work, Dodge and his col-
leagues (e.g., Dodge, 1980: Dodge & Frame, 1982) did find that when aggressive boys
were faced with ambiguous situations with negative outcomes (e.g., getting hit in the
back of the head by a ball), they attributed more hostile intentions to the ‘provoca-
teur’ than did their non-aggressive peers. Other work indicated that when aggressive
boys felt threatened (Dodge & Somberg, 1987), this ‘hostile attributional bias’ was
extended to accidental events, and that, compared to their peers, aggressive children
had a more general deficit in their ability to recall relevant social cues (Dodge, Pettit,
Bates, & Valente, 1995). Furthermore, similar hostile attributional biases have been
found in a variety of aggressive clinical samples, including incarcerated violent
offenders (e.g., Slaby & Guerra, 1988) and boys undergoing residential treatment for
their aggression (Nasby, Hayden, & DePaulo, 1979).
Dodge and colleagues, however, also examined other forms of aggression that did
not involve reacting to misperceived threats (i.e., reactive aggression). In contrast to
reactive aggression, these proactive (or bullying) forms of aggression focused on the
desirable social and material gains that could be produced by aggression (see also
Hartup, 1974 on the related instrumental vs. hostile aggression distinction). In their
initial 4-part study, Dodge and Coie (1987) found that although both reactively (RA)
and proactively aggressive (PA) children were rejected by their peers, PA children were
more likely to be seen as leaders and having a sense of humor than other aggressive
groups (which included RA children, and a mixed reactive/proactive, or RA/PA,
aggressive group). Moreover, in another study, it was found that, compared to other
aggressive groups (RA and RA/PA), PA children reported more positive outcome
expectations and greater self-efficacy for enacting aggression, and they also were
more likely to choose instrumental than relational goals (Crick & Dodge, 1996). In
other words, PA children believed they were effective at aggression and that it would
produce desired instrumental outcomes (e.g., keeping a ball that was seized from other
children). They concluded, ‘These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that
proactive aggression is controlled (and motivated) by the expectation of external
rewards . . . proactive-aggressive children are likely to view aggression as an effective
and viable means for obtaining social goals’ (Crick & Dodge, 1996, p. 998).
Finally, one other study (Dodge, Lochman, Harnish, Bates, & Pettit, 1997) provides
some important additional details regarding the nature of proactive aggression. As part
of a 4-year longitudinal project, a large sample of both aggressive and non-aggressive
boys and girls was followed from kindergarten to third grade. As in Dodge and Coie
(1987), RA children made more early stage processing errors (i.e., misinterpreting
negative social situations in ways that promoted aggression) than all other groups. In
contrast, what distinguished PA children was that they both expected aggression to
be an easy and effective social strategy, and that they would feel more emotionally
positive than all other children after initiating aggression. Moreover, unlike other
aggressive children, PA children’s social preference scores (peer nominations of
liking-disliking) did not differ from those of non-aggressive children at any of the
three yearly assessments.
Collectively, the results of these studies contradict Sutton and colleagues’ initial
claims about the Crick and Dodge (1994) model. The SIP model addresses both
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2001 Social Development, 10, 1, 2001
64 William F. Arsenio and Elizabeth A. Lemerise
reactively aggressive children, who do suffer from the sorts of social skill deficits and
basic misunderstandings that Sutton et al. discuss, but it also accounts for proactively
aggressive children (or bullies) who are no worse than non-aggressive children in their
interpretations of socially provocative situations. Rather, these proactively aggressive
children seem to display ‘biased’ response evaluation styles (relative to both other
aggressive and non-aggressive children). That is, proactively aggressive children’s
beliefs that they can effectively use aggression to achieve their instrumental goals and
that they will feel relatively fine following such acts of aggression are linked with their
greater levels of aggression. And, as Crick and Dodge acknowledge, it would be pos-
sible for some proactively aggressive children to be relatively proficient in under-
standing their peers, and to use that knowledge to serve instrumentally aggressive ends
(e.g., recognizing a larger child is afraid and will not put up a fight over giving up his
lunch money). Crick and Dodge, however, do not simply attribute Sutton and col-
leagues’ position to insufficient knowledge regarding the nature of proactive aggres-
sion. In part, this may be because Sutton et al. do sometimes show some awareness
of the distinction between reactive and proactive aggression, but this distinction does
not seem to address all of their reservations regarding the SIP model.

The Role of Values

Sutton et al. recognize bullies ‘. . . may perceive and interpret social cues . . . accu-
rately, but may differ in goal selection, response strategy generation, and response
decisions’ (Sutton et al., 1999a, p. 122). They argue this difference in goal and strat-
egy selection may reflect past experiences and that the more critical issue ‘. . . may lie
in the values of the bully rather than the accuracy of the cognitions: they view the
costs and benefits of aggression differently’ (Sutton et al., 1999a, p. 122). In an impor-
tant sense this last comment seems quite accurate: most of the unique features of
proactively aggressive children converge on their ‘values’ and ‘valuing’ processes
regarding aggression, namely ‘it’s easy, it works, and it makes me feel good.’As Sutton
et al. further note, what is missing in this valuing process is any sense of empathy
regarding costs to victims, and any sense that deliberately victimizing others in the
pursuit of desired instrumental gains is not just incompetent, but morally wrong.
Crick and Dodge (1999) never address this focus on values. One simple explana-
tion might be that what Sutton et al. call ‘values’ can be conceptualized as outcome
expectancies, goals, and self-efficacy evaluations within the SIP model. If the values
that children hold are a form of social cognition, then the fact that children with biased
values/social cognition engage in higher levels of aggression is, in a broad sense, con-
sistent with the SIP model (i.e., ‘biased late stage social cognitions = biased values’).
This resolution, however, conceals more than it clarifies. Descriptions of the SIP model
routinely avoid any mention of ‘values.’ The model is quite explicitly value free in the
sense that such common moral concepts such as fairness, justice, reciprocity, and
‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are almost entirely missing. This ‘value blindness,’ of course, is
not unique to the SIP model, most current research on cognitive mediators of aggres-
sion also avoids moral concepts. Similarly, most recent research on children’s moral
reasoning shows little awareness of the literature that explicitly addresses children’s
aggression.
The theoretical and empirical divisions between the study of aggression and moral
development seem especially odd given that both fields share a common focus on the
intentional physical and psychological victimization of others. In one of the few arti-
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 Varieties of Childhood Bullying 65
cles to address these issues, Guerra, Nucci, and Huesmann (1994) also note that this
gap is curious since much modern work in both fields focuses on how children’s rea-
soning and understanding regarding various aspects of victimization affects their
behavior. A complete historical explanation for the divergence in these fields is beyond
the scope of this paper. Rather, we would like to provide a brief explanation of how and
why certain ‘moral’ concepts can be added to the SIP model in a way that will both
increase its explanatory power and address Sutton and colleagues’ criticisms.

What Are Socially Competent Social Cognitions?

According to the SIP model, how do the social cognitive biases associated with proac-
tive aggression actually lead to aggression? One potentially useful way of addressing
this question begins with Crick and Dodge’s (1999) rejection of the notion of socially
skilled bullies because ‘it implies that competent social cognitions can result in incom-
petent behaviors’ (p. 131). For Crick and Dodge, even if some bullies have a superior
theory of mind (competent social cognition), it could not lead to incompetent
behavior (bullying) unless other aspects of bullies’ social reasoning were biased and
therefore incompetent. A problem with this assertion is that using incompetent behav-
ior as a criterion for incompetent social cognition is tautological: incompetent social
cognitions are defined in terms of their association with incompetent behaviors. But
is there a more theoretical way of determining whether a particular set of social
cognitions is competent or not, independent from an empirical association with in-
competent behavior?
This question, we believe, is best answered by returning to some of the unique char-
acteristics of reactive and proactive aggression. In ambiguous provocative encounters,
reactively aggressive children are fundamentally inaccurate in understanding critical
aspects of the situation, and, as a result, they behave with the mistaken belief that the
other child initiated the aggression. This focus on the other child’s intent is a funda-
mental concept in theories of children’s moral development. Piaget (1965) introduced
the idea that young children initially judge the moral qualities of a negative act by the
material consequences of that act, but, with development, shift to the underlying inten-
tions of the actor. In a key sense, reactive aggression and much else in the SIP model
is built on the empirical finding that children, in fact, don’t seem to aggress in response
to consequences (e.g., accidents or misfired prosocial attempts), but to their percep-
tions of the actor’s intent. This is a cornerstone moral concept, very much supported
by SIP research.
For example, in his initial research, Dodge (1980) begins with Piaget’s focus on
intentional harm versus material consequences in judgments regarding aggression. He
designed two studies to examine whether aggressive children were deficient in cue
utilization (i.e., ignoring information about others’ intentions and focusing on the
consequences of their behavior) or whether they suffered from cue distortion (i.e.,
focusing on others’ intentions, but perceiving those intentions inaccurately). As is well
known, in this and numerous other studies (see Coie & Dodge, 1998, for a review),
aggressive children attribute hostile intentions to their peers in ambiguous and some-
times in accidental situations (e.g., Dodge & Somberg, 1987). Perhaps equally impor-
tant, however, is the fact that non-aggressive and aggressive children do not differ
in their judgments about children who behave with clearly hostile intent. Thus, both
aggressive and non-aggressive children are concerned about the intentions of
others who create negative outcomes for them. If negative outcomes are generated
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66 William F. Arsenio and Elizabeth A. Lemerise
intentionally, then the act is construed as aggressive, and, in turn, an aggressive
response is seen as both legitimate and desirable. In short, the moral intentions of
others are pivotal for both aggressive and non-aggressive children; unfortunately, reac-
tively aggressive children’s evaluations of these intentions are often inaccurate. The
criterion for competent social cognitions involving reactive aggression, then, involves
their accuracy.
An important implication of this research is that children themselves use the fair-
ness and moral legitimacy of other’s actions in judging potential behavioral responses.
If a child believes that another intentionally created a negative outcome, then that act
is interpreted as aggressive (and unfair, see Astor, 1994), and retaliation is seen as
legitimate. In other words, both reactively aggressive and non-aggressive children
seem to share a core moral value, essentially ‘it’s not ok (right/fair) for someone to
do something bad to me on purpose.’ The ‘values’ of reactively aggressive children
appear to be recognizably and normatively moral, but the social reasoning that they
use to determine whether others have violated those moral standards is flawed.
In contrast, this focus on intention (‘did the other person mean to harm me’) seems
to operate quite differently in proactively aggressive children. Available evidence (e.g.,
Dodge et al., 1997) suggests that PA children do care about the intentions of others
who initiate negative outcomes directed towards them. In fact, PA children do not differ
from their non-aggressive peers in their understanding of others’ aggressive intentions,
and they are not more likely to make hostile attributions in reaction to other children’s
aggression (or non-aggressively caused negative outcomes) than non-aggressive chil-
dren. What is puzzling, then, is the apparent asymmetry in their social information
processing involving intentions: PA children seem to care about the intentions (and
moral legitimacy) of others’ actions, but at the same time they use illegitimate aggres-
sion to advance their own goals at the clear expense of others.
The available evidence on the social cognitive biases of these proactively aggres-
sive children has not explicitly addressed this moral asymmetry, and especially how
these children justify their instrumental aggression to themselves. Yet, a brief exami-
nation of some of the later-step SIP biases does provide some potential insights into
this ‘intention imbalance.’ As noted earlier, at least three biases have emerged in PA
children’s social information processing involving their outcome expectations, self-
efficacy evaluations, and social goal selections. Although previous studies have
shown that aggressive children, in general, are more likely to believe that aggression
will produce desirable material outcomes and that they will be successful when enact-
ing aggression (Perry, Perry, & Rasmussen, 1986; Slaby & Guerra, 1988), more recent
work (e.g., Crick & Dodge, 1996; Dodge et al., 1997) suggests that these biases
are more likely to be associated with proactive aggression. These beliefs suggest that
some children are aggressive because they are good at it and it gets them what they
want. Put this way, it seems less surprising that PA children are aggressive than that
most children are not aggressive! If proactive aggression ‘delivers the goods’—that
extra turn on the swing, not having to wait in line, getting someone’s lunch money—
why are more children not proactively aggressive? Is the primary reason that most
children refrain from being aggressive, because they believe their aggression will be
ineffective?
Although the answer to this last question seems obvious, it is important to explore
this further. If aggression were simply a matter of having the pragmatic ability to enact
it, then all children’s aggression-related social reasoning, and not just proactively
aggressive children’s, would primarily focus on power, aggressive ability (whether
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 Varieties of Childhood Bullying 67
physical or psychological in the sense of Sutton et al.’s ‘superior’ bullies), and the
avoidance of detection. Instead, all children, including proactively aggressive children,
are concerned with the intentions of others who create negative outcomes (‘why
did she do it?’ rather than ‘is she bigger and stronger than me?’). Having different
self-efficacy and outcome expectations for aggression does not explain why all groups
of children focus on the legitimacy of aggression directed towards them (even if
misperceived by reactively aggressive children), but only proactively aggressive
children ignore those concerns when they come into conflict with their own needs
and desires.
A more meaningful explanation is suggested by research indicating that, compared
to their non-aggressive peers, proactively aggressive children appear to be more con-
cerned about achieving instrumental than relational goals (Crick & Dodge, 1996, and
see Erdley & Asher, 1996 on more general group differences in goals). In other words,
in the SIP model, when it comes to that instant after children have interpreted and
encoded a social event, they must decide (whether consciously or not) what sorts of
social goals they want to pursue, ‘relationship enhancing’ or ‘self enhancing goals.’
At one level this is an extremely important distinction because it suggests that a crit-
ical aspect of social reasoning involves the larger social goals that this reasoning
serves. That is, social information is being processed in the service of pursuing a wide
range of dynamic social goals and relationships ranging from close friendships, to
dyadic enemies, to complex group relationships. At the same time, however, in its
original form, the instrumental/relational distinction may be too simplistic to address
the issues for which it was created.
Killen and Nucci (1995) have argued that morality (including avoidance of victim-
ization and aggression) and autonomy (involving individual goals) are often viewed
as being in conflict, where morality is mistakenly seen as the ‘achievement of sup-
pression of the self-interested, self-motivated individual’ (p. 53). They go on to argue
that ‘it is important to distinguish “legitimate nonmoral concerns” from “selfish” con-
cerns. Whereas many social conflicts involve a “clash of blind desires,” other conflicts
involve legitimate concerns of the self that sometimes have to be weighted with moral
ones, such as personal projects . . . personal goals . . . and personal hobbies’ (p. 55).
For our purposes, they raise the important issue that children’s pursuit of instrumen-
tal personal goals, per se, is not linked with negative developmental outcomes (Killen
& Smetana, 1999; Nucci & Lee, 1993). Rather, it is when children harm and victim-
ize others in the pursuit of such goals that the real difficulties begin. There is nothing
intrinsic to instrumental goals themselves that forces children to use aggressive means
to realize these goals.
If instrumental goals do not necessarily lead to proactive aggression, then why have
several studies found an empirical connection between such goals and aggression?
Part of the answer is methodological. Much of what we know about children’s goals
comes from research where the primary emphasis is on response evaluation (e.g.,
Crick & Dodge, 1996; Crick & Ladd, 1990). Typically, children are presented with
challenging situations and asked to evaluate several kinds of outcomes (e.g., instru-
mental, relational, self efficacy, etc.) for a variety of possible behavioral responses
(e.g., physical aggression, verbal aggression, prosocial assertion, passive withdrawal
or avoidance) to each situation. Then at the end of the many questions about each sit-
uation, children make a forced choice concerning their preference for a positive rela-
tional or instrumental outcome to the situation. Thus, assessment of goals typically
occurs after assessment of response evaluation (even though in the SIP model, goals
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68 William F. Arsenio and Elizabeth A. Lemerise
are thought to be prior to response evaluation). In addition, the focus is less on
general social goals and how they relate to behavioral choices, and more on children’s
goal preferences in the context of a provocative or aggressive act. As Erdley & Asher
(1996) point out, a better approach is to focus explicitly on how a variety of goals
relate to behavior by presenting children with multiple goals to rate (rather than a
forced choice). When Erdley and Asher used this approach they found that a combi-
nation of goals was a better predictor of behavior than were children’s attributional
patterns.
Despite these limitations, the available research on children’s goals still has poten-
tially important implications for understanding how non-aggressive and proactively
aggressive children’s social reasoning differs. The greater relational focus of non-
aggressive children suggests that these children are concerned about how their behav-
ior affects others. In contrast, the more instrumental focus of PA children suggests that
they are less concerned about others than with their own self-focused satisfaction.
Assessed in the context of aggressive acts, the instrumental/relational distinction is
best seen as answering the question ‘In a challenging situation, I think mostly about
how what I can do a) affects others, or b) affects me.’ Framed in this way, the social
goal results for PA children seem quite consistent with one of Sutton and colleagues’
central claims: ‘Could it be the case that many bullies can do all this [SIP] very accu-
rately and in fact use this skill to their advantage, lacking the empathy . . . to integrate
such information into their interactions?’ (Sutton et al., 1999a, p. 118).

The Role of Emotions in Bullying

In our view what is largely missing from the SIP explanation of proactive aggression
(and aggression in general) is a systematic account of the role of emotions and emotion
processes. Although we have addressed this issue elsewhere (Lemerise & Arsenio,
2000), several points are relevant for the present discussion. First, there is some indi-
rect support for the claim that proactive aggression might be linked with empathic
failures. Strayer (1987) and others (e.g., Feshbach, 1975; Hoffman, 1983) have long
argued that empathy includes both separable cognitive (understanding others’ emo-
tions) and affective (sharing others’ emotions) components. In support of that model,
Cohen and Strayer (1996) found that conduct-disordered adolescents, compared to
their peers, were both less able to recognize others’ emotions and, independent of their
understanding, were less likely to report that they would share those emotions. It might
be especially revealing to conduct a similar study using separate proactive and reac-
tive aggressive groups as well as non-aggressive children. Following Sutton and col-
leagues’ reasoning, it might be expected that proactively aggressive children would
not differ from other groups in their understanding of emotions, but instead in the
extent to which they shared those emotions.
Although more empathy-related research is needed regarding different types of
aggression, several basic issues are likely to remain. If PA aggressive children are actu-
ally found to be less empathically responsive than other children (including the RA
aggressive children) then this raises some complex additional theoretical and thera-
peutic questions. Attempting to alter the ‘faulty’ social reasoning of reactively aggres-
sive children may be useful, but (as Sutton et al. note) trying to change the moral
values and empathic tendencies of proactively aggressive children by focusing on their
reasoning is not likely to be effective.

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 Varieties of Childhood Bullying 69
Addressing this last issue may require obtaining a better understanding of the
processes by which PA children avoid being affected by their victims’ emotional
responses. For example, recent research by Blair (1999) indicates that, compared to
their peers, young adolescents higher in psychopathy had greater difficulties in reco-
gnizing sadness and fear—emotions which may play a central role in inhibiting aggres-
sion (see also Blair, 1997, for related psycho-physiological evidence). In other words,
PA children may have very specific emotion deficits that are not obvious from other
aspects of their SIP or TOM reasoning. Alternatively, many PA children may not really
differ from their non-aggressive peers in emotion understanding, but instead they may
learn to use unique ‘coping’ strategies to minimize their responsiveness to victims’
distress. In research by Slaby and Guerra (1988), for example, antisocial adolescents
were more likely than control participants to claim that victims do not suffer as a result
of victimization. It may be important for future studies to determine whether PA chil-
dren use active strategies (whether consciously or not) to minimize or distort the reac-
tions of victim, or whether they are simply unresponsive to these cues.
Our second point is that emotional processes are as important for understanding
reactively aggressive and non-aggressive children as for proactively aggressive chil-
dren. In fact, Dodge and Coie (1987) specifically describe reactive aggression as
‘angry’ and suggest that studying aspects of temperament, emotion, and level of emo-
tional arousal will contribute to ‘. . . understanding of the distinction between reactive
and proactive aggression’ (p. 1156). Despite this theoretical interest, there is little
research on the explicit contributions of emotion processes to aggression (although
see Arsenio & Lover, 1997; Arsenio, Cooperman, & Lover, 2000; and Lemerise &
Dodge, 2000).
There has been, however, a great deal of work on the contributions of emotion
processes to social competence, in general, and prosocial behavior, in particular (see
Denham, 1998, for a review). For example, Eisenberg and Fabes (1992) proposed an
influential model in which levels of emotionality and emotion regulation interact to
produce different profiles of social functioning. In support of that model, Eisenberg,
Fabes, and colleagues have found that moderately low emotionality (emotion inten-
sity) in combination with moderate (optimal) use of regulatory control predict both
higher levels of prosocial behavior as well as optimal social adjustment (e.g.,
Eisenberg et al., 1996, 1997, 1999).
The Eisenberg and Fabes (1992) model also makes specific predictions concerning
reactive and proactive aggression. Reactive aggression is hypothesized to be a product
of high negative emotional intensity and under-regulation of emotion. Consequently,
reactive aggressors are expected to be easily aroused (by even minor events), less able
to use constructive coping strategies, and more likely to act out, either through angry
outbursts or aggression (see Eisenberg, Fabes, Nyman, Bernzweig, & Pinuelas, 1994).
The high levels of personal distress experienced by the reactive aggressor also may
interfere with sympathy and prosocial responding (Eisenberg et al., 1996) as well as
with their social information processing skills (Lemerise & Arsenio, 2000).
In contrast, proactive aggression is also seen as linked with under-regulation, but
combined with low emotional intensity (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1992). Given this profile,
these children may be less ‘prone to . . . reactive aggression . . . and their aggressive
behaviors may be less due to emotional reactivity than to the desire for certain ends
combined with relatively low levels of behavioral control’ (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1992,
p. 142). Moreover, low emotional reactivity in combination with under-regulation

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2001 Social Development, 10, 1, 2001

70 William F. Arsenio and Elizabeth A. Lemerise
should be associated with ‘low levels of . . . sympathy or personal distress in response
to others’ emotional responding’ (p. 142), thus removing a major inhibitory influence
on aggressive responding. Relatively low levels of emotionality should also leave the
early stages of SIP undisrupted, whereas low emotional reactivity should facilitate
enacting responses which cause distress in others (Cohen & Strayer, 1996; Lemerise
& Arsenio, 2000). Interestingly, Eisenberg and Fabes (1992) predict empathic failures
for both RA and PA children, but for different reasons. RA children are thought to be
overaroused and poorly regulated, making them too self-focused to be sympathetic,
whereas PA children are hypothesized to be insufficiently emotionally aroused to react
with sympathy.
We argue that an investigation of the contributions of emotionality and emotion
regulation skills to reactive and proactive aggression has the potential to improve our
understanding of these aggressive patterns and, thus, to inform the design of inter-
ventions. Although some studies have shown that conduct disorders are linked to fail-
ures/deficits in emotion processes and empathy (e.g., Arsenio & Fleiss, 1996; Casey,
1996; Casey & Schlosser, 1994; Cohen & Strayer, 1996), this research has rarely dis-
tinguished between reactive and proactive aggressors. However, when Dodge et al.
(1997) did make this distinction in a psychiatric sample of chronically violent youth,
they found that reactively violent boys gave more sad responses on an affect labeling
task and were more likely to be diagnosed as depressed than were proactively violent
boys (consistent with Eisenberg and Fabes’ hypothesis that reactive aggression is char-
acterized by more intensely negative emotions). More generally, we would propose
that differences in emotionality and emotion regulation also may underlie some of
the empathy, SIP, and behavioral differences that have been reported for reactive,
proactive, and nonaggressive children.

Conclusion
The debate between Sutton et al. and Crick and Dodge raises several important ques-
tions that are likely to clarify our understanding of bullies and bullying. As Crick and
Dodge note, children engage in different types of aggressive and bullying behaviors,
only some of which are related to ‘social skills deficits.’ In fact, proactive aggres-
sors/bullies suffer less from inaccurate social reasoning than from a comfort with using
aggression to obtain desirable material and psychological outcomes, even when it
requires victimizing and harming others. We have argued that these biases of bullies
are best understood in terms of a fundamental moral and emotional asymmetry alluded
to by Sutton et al. When bullies are the targets of provocative behaviors, they appear
to have the same concerns with moral intentions as their peers. But when their needs
conflict with those of others, bullies are willing to initiate intentional aggression that
they would otherwise consider unacceptable.
We believe that future progress in understanding this ‘victimization imbalance,’ as
well as other aspects of bullying, requires particular attention to two issues: the nature
of social competence and the role of emotional processes. For social competence, the
issue is not so much that Crick and Dodge and Sutton et al. have different definitions,
but that apparently so do bullies and their non-aggressive peers. Most non-aggressive
children seem to share the Crick and Dodge view of social competence; they want to
be liked and accepted (or at least not disliked and rejected) by their larger circle of
age mates. In contrast, bullies seem to define competence in the narrower sense
described by Sutton et al., that is, if an act of aggression/victimization effectively
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2001 Social Development, 10, 1, 2001
 Varieties of Childhood Bullying 71
produces desired outcomes, then that act is competent. It is equally clear, however,
that most other adults and children view such behavior as distinctly incompetent.
Moreover, bullying is developmentally incompetent because of the kinds of longterm
emotional and relational difficulties that it produces for both bullies and their victims.
The empathic deficits that Sutton et al., in our view, correctly attribute to bullies are
extremely unlikely to produce satisfying longterm social relationships even in those
few bullies who are able to avoid the immediate rejection of peers.
This brings us to our final point. It will be extremely difficult to understand bully-
ing, (especially when it is not associated with ‘social skills deficits’) without having
a clearer, more systematic model of how emotion processes are involved in both social
reasoning and behavior. As some have noted (e.g., Eisenberg & Fabes, 1992; Lemerise
& Arsenio, 2000), it will also not be enough to focus on just the potentially disrup-
tive influences of emotion. Children’s accurate understanding of others’ emotions, as
well as their moderate, other-oriented emotional responsiveness are likely to be essen-
tial protective factors against both bullying and reactive forms of aggression.

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Author Note
William F. Arsenio, Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology; Elizabeth A. Lemerise, Department of Psy-
chology. A special thanks to Heidi-Louise Kelly for her helpful discussions regarding some of the ideas
contained in this article.

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2001 Social Development, 10, 1, 2001