Longitudinal Relationship between Bullying Victimization and Non-Suicidal Self-Injury among Chinese Adolescents: The Buffering Roles of Gratitude and Parental Autonomy Support

Nini Wu, Jianhong Mo, Anluan Wen, Haoer Ou, Weixin Gu, Yunqing Qiu, Lixin Yuan () and Xiaoyu Lan ()
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Nini Wu: Department of Psychology, School of Education, Guangdong University of Education, Guangzhou 510310, China
Jianhong Mo: Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Anluan Wen: Department of Psychology, School of Education, Guangdong University of Education, Guangzhou 510310, China
Haoer Ou: Department of Psychology, School of Education, Guangdong University of Education, Guangzhou 510310, China
Weixin Gu: Department of Psychology, School of Education, Guangdong University of Education, Guangzhou 510310, China
Yunqing Qiu: Department of Psychology, School of Education, Guangdong University of Education, Guangzhou 510310, China
Lixin Yuan: Department of Psychology, School of Education, Guangdong University of Education, Guangzhou 510310, China
Xiaoyu Lan: Promenta Research Center, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, 0373 Oslo, Norway

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 2, 1-14

Abstract: Drawing on the resilience-oriented socioecological framework, the current study contributes to scarce scholarship by exploring intrapersonal (i.e., gratitude) and interpersonal (i.e., parental autonomy support) factors in the longitudinal association between bullying victimization and adolescent non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). Participants were 238 Chinese adolescents ( M age at Time 1 (T1) = 13.45 years; 106 girls and 132 boys) based on a two-wave prospective design with data spanning one year. At T1, adolescents self-rated all study variables, and at Time 2 (T2), youth again reported their NSSI. The results showed a significant main effect ( b = 0.12, SE = 0.05, p = 0.04), indicating that bullying victimization was positively related to T2 NSSI one year later, even controlling for T1 NSSI. Moderation analyses further indicated that parental autonomy support buffered against the positive association between bullying victimization and T2 NSSI, but only when adolescents experienced lower levels of gratitude. Specifically, for adolescents with lower levels of gratitude, high levels of parental autonomy support, in a compensatory way, prevented adolescents from NSSI after victimization occurred ( b = −0.03, SE = 0.09, p = 0.78); by contrast, for those with higher levels of gratitude, bullying victimization was not significantly related to T2 NSSI, regardless of the levels of parental autonomy support ( b = 0.07, SE = 0.04, p = 0.59 for higher parental autonomy support; b = 0.01, SE = 0.07, p = 0.93 for lower parental autonomy support). These findings suggest that gratitude and parental autonomy support, manifesting in a compensatory interaction pattern, could serve as targeted agents for breaking the vicious linkage between bullying victimization and NSSI.

Keywords: adolescents; bullying victimization; non-suicidal self-injury; gratitude; parental autonomy support (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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