Goals of the Presented Study
The presented study investigated moral disengagement in relationship to bullying and two demographic variables (gender and classroom) in early adolescence. Drawing upon the literature reviewed above, we formulated three hypotheses:
(1) Moral disengagement would positively correlate with bullying;
(2) Boys would report higher moral disengagement than girls;
(3) Moral disengagement would vary as a function of the classroom. Unlike the existing studies addressing mostly Moral Disengagement from Bullying: The Effects of Gender and Classroom 283 general moral disengagement (measured by items referring to general harmful behaviors) we, inspired by the study by Hymel et al. (2005), focused specifically on moral disengagement from bullying (measured by items directly referring to bullying).
Since classroom anti-bullying efforts may benefit from including a moral education component that cultivates moral motivation (Gasser & Keller, 2009;Kollerovแ, Janošovแ, & Řํčan, 2014), examination of moral disengagement from bullying in association with gender and classroom may provide practically relevant information.