I50 Book Reviews

Kevin Murphy, favors the use of such tests, although expressing a number of important
qualifications. Instruction and Training are next addressed, and suggestions made for
improving the effectiveness of training procedures. Within the next chapter, on Perfor-
mance Appraisal, it is argued that law enforcement agencies need a whole new ap-
praisal system, and cannot simply borrow something from other types of institutions.
Leadership and Supervision are the foci of chapter 12, although as Neil Brewer ad-
mits this topic is also addressed elsewhere in the volume. Recent research dealing with
the effects of various shift working arrangements are then covered extremely effec-
tively. The final chapter is a well-written overview of the domain of psychology and
policing. My only reservation about the chapter is that some of the material might have
been more useful had it come at the beginning of the volume.
Overall, I wish to congratulate the volume editors on assembling an interesting col-
lection of chapters demonstrating the usefulness of bringing psychology to bear on a
range of policing problems. The book will be of interest to applied psychologists and
other professionals working in law enforcement. My only reservations about the book
lie in the uneven quality and the little cross-referencing between chapters, and the lack
of thematic integration. In addition some of the chapters use an unnecessary amount of
jargon and may simply alienate nonspecialists, including the police trainers at which
the volume is evidently aimed. Such people may well board the bus but quickly de-
mand to be let off at the next stop!
Peter B. Ainsworth
School of Social Policy
University of Manchester
Manchester, England

REFERENCES
Ainsworth P, Pease K (1987): “Police Work.” Le- Ainsworth P (1995): “Psychology and Policing in a
icester: BPSRoutledge. Changing World.” Chichester: Wiley.
Bull R, Bustin B, Evans B, Gahagan B (1984): “Psy-
chology for Police Officers.” Chichester: Wiley.

BULLYING AT SCHOOL, by Dan Olweus. Cambridge, MA,

Blackwell, 1993, ix +, 344 pages.

Bullying at school is a very active research topic and an important social policy issue
in many European and Pacific Rim countries. Interestingly, North American research-
ers, with a few notable exceptions, have not been attracted to this area of study. This
volume was written by Dan Olweus, Professor of Psychology at the University of Bergen
(Norway), and one of the leading figures in the world today in the area of bully-victim
relationships in children.
The volume is part of the series on Understanding Children’s Worlds, a series whose
aim is to have developmental psychologists present their research findings to other
professions working with children, such as physicians, social workers, and teachers.
 Book Reviews 151

Books are written so that innovative research is accessible to the educated practitioner.
Consequently, books should serve at least two functions: Present scientific findings and
make connections between these findings and applied settings.
The study of school bully-victim relationships represents an interesting confluence
of scientific inquiry and social policy. Dan Olweus has based this volume on his long-
term work in Scandinavia, where basic research on bullies and victims is used to inform
school policy. The first section of the book, “What We Know About Bullying,” summa-
rizes the results of a series of massive, long-term studies in Sweden and Norway. In
these studies Olweus defines bullying and victimization as follows: “A student is being
bullied or victimized when he or she is exposed, repeatedly, and over time, to negative
actions on the part of one or more students” (p. 9). Negative actions are intentional
attempts to hurt someone, and they can be physical (e.g., hitting someone), verbal (e.g.,
name-calling or teasing), or social ostracizing (e.g., refusing to play with someone).
Based on these data, one out of seven Norwegian and Swedish children were involved
in bully-victim problems. Similar and in some cases, higher, rates are reported in Fin-
land, Canada, and the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, Ireland, and Spain, as well as
in the United States.
The problem of children being victimized at school reached at a crisis point in Nor-
way in 1982 when three boys commited suicide after being victimized at school. In the
following year the Norwegian Minister of Education commissioned Olweus to conduct
a nationwide anti-bullying campaign. Thus, Olweus’ basic research was motivated by
and continues to inform practices in schools.
Most of the research reported in the first section is based on Olweus’ bully question-
naire, used by both students and teachers. Following Olweus, most of the research on
bullying conducted around the world utilizes the questionnaire format (usually with the
responder remaining anonymous). Olweus’ data show that boys, compared to girls, are
more frequently exposed to bullying; this is particularly true for junior high school
students. While girls were exposed more frequently to “indirect” forms of bullying
(e.g., social isolation, exclusion) it was also clear that boys were still the main perpetra-
tors of bullying, especially “direct” forms of bullying such as open attacks, to both boys
and girls.
These questionnaire data have resulted in a typography of bullies and victims. As
noted above, bullies can use both direct and indirect methods and victims can be either
passive victims (i.e., generally fragile, shy youngsters) or provocative victims (i.e.,
youngsters who are both victimized and aggressive). David Perry and colleagues [e.g.,
Perry et al., 19901, using different peer nomination techniques, also categorize bullies
and victims along these dimensions.
The use of questionnaire and peer nomination techniques is almost dictated by the
infrequent and private nature (that is, they tend to occur in places which are not super-
vised by adults) of most bully-victim incidents. Recently, however, Kenneth Dodge
and his student David Schwartz [Schwartz et al., 19931 have utilized the contrived
play group paradigm to observe the ontogeny of bully-victim relationships in groups
of previously unacquainted groups of boys. This experimental research, though still in
its very early stages, corroborates much of Olweus’ questionnaire findings. For ex-
ample, bullies use aggression instrumentally; that is, they bully weaker peers to get
things like money, favors, or to exhibit their dominance in public. Passive victims
152 Book Reviews

are shy, withdrawn youngsters, whose exhibitions of pain at the hands of bullies
reinforces bullying behaviors. Perry’s work in this area suggests that bullies actu-
ally sample their peers for children who respond in this way. Provocative or ag-
gressive victims tend to use aggression reactively, not instrumentally. That is,
they are aggressive as a result of losing control or as a result of their misreading
the attributions of their peers. Research, then, has presented a rather consistent
picture of bully-victim relationships from questionnaire, peer nomination, and
experimental studies. The task remains, however, to confirm this through natural-
istic observations of bully-victim relationships in schools.
An important aspect of the research chapter is Olweus’ debunking of some myths
surrounding bully-victim problems, For example, he shows that the likelihood of these
problems is not greater in big cities than in the countryside or in large classrooms com-
pared to small. What does seem to affect occurrence of bullying is explicit policy pro-
hibiting bullying and allocating resources to implement the policy. The change in rates
of aggression is particularly impressive in light of the stability of patterns of aggression
across childhood and adolescence.
In Part I1 of the book, “What We Can Do About Bullying,” the nuts and bolts of anti-
bullying policy are presented. School policy is guided by the interesting notion that it is
a basic democratic right of children to be free from oppression. It is the role of the
school to enforce this right, according to Olweus. Most interesting from my perspective
as a North American is the stress that Olweus places on group responsibility. All chil-
dren and adults are expected to be vigilant in their non-tolerance of bullying. Olweus
notes that bullying occurs in situations where individuals tacitly accept bullying by the
very fact that they do not stop it. Anecdotal evidence that I, as a parent of elementary
school children, have collected suggests that many American teachers think that indi-
vidual students should solve these interpersonal problems themselves. The ubiquitous
“Work it out yourselves” may say something about North American “individualism” in
relation to Scandinavian collective responsibility.
In Parts I1 and IV Olweus explicitly outlines policy guidelines by which schools can
implement an anti-bullying program. In Part I11 he presents data on the effectiveness of
these programs. Bullying, like other forms of aggression, is incredibly stable. However,
when these explicit policies are followed, rates of aggression, both at school and in the
community, plunge. Some of these policies are as simple as providing playground su-
pervision. Others are more complicated and more difficult, such as involving parents
and the community at large.
There are other books attempting to reach the same goals-presenting basic research
and making policy recommendations-such as Smith andThompson [ 19911 and Smith
and Sharpe [1994]. The value of this volume is that it presents a unified picture from a
sustained research project. Further, this book meets its intended goal of making basic
science accessible to the educated public. I hope that American readers will start attend-
ing to this problem.
I find it ironic that much of the pioneering research in bullying is occurring in
countries that might otherwise be considered much more “gentle” and socially
democratic, while in the United States, it is still a rather peripheral area of scien-
tific and policy study. This should change. In many American schools, even in
“idealized” places like Athens, Georgia, kids are exposed to high levels and fre-
quent cases of violence in schools. Schools, parents, and the larger community
 Book Reviews 153

must address this issue and recognize that kids themselves need help-they can
not “work it out” alone.

Anthony D. Pellegrini
University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia

REFERENCES
Perry D, Willard J, Perry L (1990): Peers’ percep-
tions of the consequences that victimized chil-
dren provide aggressors. Child Development,
64:1289-1389.
Schwartz D, Dodge K, Coie J (1993): The emer-
gence of chronic peer victimization in boys’ play
groups. Child Development, 64: 1755-1 772.
Smith P, Shape S (eds) (1994): “School Bullying.”
London: Routledge.
Smith P, Thompson D (eds) (1991): “Practical Ap-
proaches to Bullying.” London: David Fulton
Publishers.