Predicting Types of Bullying Based on Subscales of Moral Disengagement and Moral Identity in Elementary School Students in Tehran

The present study aimed to predict the types of bullying based on the subscales of moral disengagement and moral identity in elementary school students. For this purpose, out of all male and female elementary school students in Tehran, 420 students were selected by cluster and simple random sampling methods, which included 203 male and 217 female students, 240 in the fifth and 180 in the sixth grade. Participants in the study answered the three questionnaires of bullying (Thornberg and Jangert, 2014), moral disengagement (Thornberg and Jangert, 2014), and moral identity (Aquino and Reed, 2003). Data were analyzed using the regression method and with the help of SPSS22 software. Considering the significance of the findings and the standardization of other indicators studied, both research hypotheses were confirmed and it was shown that the subscales of moral disengagement and moral identity both have a significant effect on predicting student bullying (α ≥ 0.05). Therefore, it can be concluded that according to the concept of moral agency, to examine the bullying of students, we can pay attention to the degree of their moral disengagement and moral identity; that is, bullying has a positive relationship with moral disengagement and a negative relationship with moral identity.