Is self-esteem a predictor or outcome of bullying involvement? Longitudinal relationships between self-esteem, physical, verbal, and relational bullying perpetration and victimization.

The relationship between low self-esteem and bullying involvement, particularly the temporal antecedence of the relationship, has been inconclusive. A potential explanation for these mixed findings is the limited consideration of bullying subtypes (i.e., physical, verbal, and relational) within longitudinal frameworks. This study examines the longitudinal relationships of self-esteem with each type of bullying perpetration and victimization by gender. Random intercept cross-lagged panel models were analyzed with the data from 3617 South Korean adolescents (female = 48.3%, age mean = 12.43, SD = 1.48 in the first wave) of the Seoul Education Longitudinal Study for three waves (7th to 9th grade). The results revealed that self-esteem was an outcome of both bullying perpetration and victimization. That is, it is not personal traits such as self-esteem that lead adolescents to engage in or become victims of bullying, but rather, involvement in bullying results in a subsequent decline in self-esteem. When all three subtypes of bullying involvement were considered simultaneously, only physical perpetration and relational victimization negatively predicted subsequent self-esteem. These findings underscore the importance of differentiating bullying subtypes in longitudinal analyses of self-esteem and point to the need for closer attention to the possibility that physical perpetration and relational victimization may be associated with subsequent decreases in self-esteem.