“Why me?”: Characterological self-blame and continued victimization in the first year of middle school
Open accessPublished version of a preprint
Abstract
This study examines the role of characterological self-blame as a unique risk factor associated with other known risk factors (depression and its behavioral and social correlates) for continued victimization across the 1st year of middle school. Relying on a large, ethnically diverse sample of 1,698 young adolescents (M(age) = 11.57, SD = .39; 55% female), self-report assessments in the fall and spring included perceptions of victim status, depressive symptoms, friendships, aggression, and responses to a hypothetical victimization vignette assessing both appraisals (characterological self-blame) and behavioral reactions (helpless responding). In addition to depression, characterological self-blame emerged as the most consistent unique risk factor for subsequent victimization. Mediation analysis suggested that the continuity of victimization between fall and spring could be partially explained by increases in characterological self-blame and depressive symptoms. In addition, cross-lagged panel analyses indicated reciprocal relations between peer victimization and characterological self-blame, suggesting cyclical processes. The study findings suggest that attribution retraining in the beginning of middle school might help prevent escalating risk for continued peer victimization.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
These findings add to prior literature on peer victimization by highlighting victimized youths' cognitive vulnerabilities in using self-blaming attributions in response to causally ambiguous social interaction contexts.
“These findings add to the prior literature on peer victimization by highlighting victimized youths’ cognitive vulnerabilities in using self-blaming attributions in response to causally ambiguous social interaction contexts (Graham & Juvonen, 1998; Schacter et al., 2015).”
From Getting Fewer “Likes” Than Others on Social Media Elicits Emotional Distress Among Victimized Adolescents (2020) · cites this paper as Schacter et al., 2015
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 57 · Cited by 107
Research works printed but not linked: 3
- Chang VY (2007). Persistent peer victimization among ethnically diverse adolescents: Risk and protective factors (Doctoral dissertation). Available from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. (Document ID 3299589).
- Dodge KA (1986). A social information processing model of social competence in children. In Minnesota symposium on child psychology (Vol. 18, pp. 77– 125).
- Salmivalli C, Karhunen J, & Lagerspetz KMJ (1996). How do victims respond to bullying? Aggressive Behavior, 22(2), 99– 109. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1098–2337(1996)22:2<99::AID-AB3>3.0.CO;2-P · DOI
- Authors
- Schacter, H. L., White, S. J., Chang, V. Y., & Juvonen, J.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- Corresponding author
- Juvonen, Jaana
- Venue
- Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2014-01-31
- Volume
- 44
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 446-455
- ISSN
- 1537-4416 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-4424
- PMC
- PMC6129379
- OpenAlex
- W2047969109
- Cited by
- 107
- References
- 57
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 21 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 8.90
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- The earlier version of this manuscript was derived from Dr. Chang's doctoral dissertation and was supported by the APA Minority Fellowship Program as well as T32 postdoctoral fellowship (5 T32 NIH MH019938). The study was supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Child Health.
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Bullying, Victimization, and Aggression
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child Abuse and Trauma
- Keywords
- characterological self-blame, peer victimization, depressive symptoms, junior high school students, early adolescents, attribution retraining, helplessness, bidirectional relationship, risk factors, aggression, friendship
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Child, Depression, Female, Guilt, Humans, Male, Peer Group, Personality, Risk Factors, Schools, Self Concept, Social Perception, Crime Victims, Bullying
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
