Role of Difficulties in Emotional Regulation and Alexithymia in Prediction of Bullying

Bullying is an important and prevalent issue that can have many psychological, behavioral, cognitive, physical, economic, social, and cultural implications. In the meantime, the ability to regulate the emotions and alexithymia are among the factors influencing bullying behaviors. Therefore, the present study was carried out to investigate the role of difficulties in emotional regulation and alexithymia in predicting bullying.

The research design was descriptive and correlational. The study population consisted of all first cycle secondary school students of district 2 of Rasht city in the academic year 2017-2018. The study sample included 250 students selected by convenience sampling method. Illinois Bullying Scale (Espelage &Holt, 2001), Difficulties in Emotional Regulation Scale (Gratz & Roemer, 2004) and the twenty-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (Bagby et al., 1994) were used to gather of data.

The results showed that non-acceptance of emotional responses (β= 0.21), difficulty engaging in goal-directed behavior (β= 0.43), impulse control difficulties (β= 0.70), lack of emotional awareness (β=0.33), lack of emotional clarity (β= 0.32) at the significance level of 0.01, limited access to emotion regulation strategies (β= 0.21), difficulty in identifying the feelings (β= 0.16), difficulty in describing the feelings (β= 0.23), and externally-oriented thinking (β= 0.24) at the significance level of 0.05 are able to predict bullying.

In sum, the results showed the relationship between bullying, difficulties in emotional regulation and alexithymia. According to findings, applying programs and methods to increase the ability to regulate emotions and reduce the mood of adolescents' alexithymia may reduce bullying behaviors which are associated with many physical and psychological disorders.