When Good Children Do Bad Things - On Bullying in Schools

What can make ordinary children act badly toward each other?

Bullying researcher Stine Kaplan examines the social mechanisms that can lead children to exclude others from their community - including the need to belong and the fear of being excluded themselves, which can cause them to compromise their own moral values and contribute to bullying patterns.

Kaplan provides concrete examples of how such patterns emerge and unfold in schools, and what mechanisms keep them going. Along the way, connections are drawn to classic social psychology experiments about how our actions are shaped by the social contexts we are part of.