Bullying and Victimization In Children with Asd; The Mediating Role of Basic and Moral Emotions

Background: Social problems in children with ASD are part of their diagnosis. However, the question we should ask ourselves is to what extent these social problems can be explained by problems in the emotion regulation as we also observe in TD children. Moral emotions, such as shame and guilt, play an important role in peer bullying in TD children. In children with ASD, these moral emotions might be less influential, yet dysregulation of the basic emotions might be more important in understanding the origin of bullying.

Objectives: In this study we examined the extent to which emotion dysregulation of basic and moral emotions are related to bullying and victimization in children with ASD, as compared to their TD peers.

Methods: The study included 130 children and young adolescents (64 with ASD, 66 TD, Mean Age 140 months), who filled out self-report questionnaires about their levels of guilt, shame, anger, fear, bullying behaviors and how often they were victim of bullying behaviors by others.

Results: Consistent with the literature, also when using self-report questionnaires, children with ASD report more often being bullied by their peers than TD children, but they report the same level of bullying others. Additionally, the outcomes showed that less guilt was associated with more bullying in both groups, but this association disappeared when delinquency was added to the model for TD children; More anger was also strongly and uniquely associated with more bullying and victimization in children with ASD but not in TD children; And fear was uniquely associated with victimization in TD children, but not in children with ASD.

Conclusions: These outcomes support the notion that lack of guilt is an essential antecedent of bullying for TD and ASD children. However, unlike TD children, emotion dysregulation, particularly anger, plays an important role in victimization as well as bullying in children with ASD. In sum, these outcomes suggest that bullying behaviors in children with ASD are not related to cold-blooded antisocial behaviors as can be observed in TD children, but to emotion dysregulation instead.