Designing a Bullying Tendency Model Based on Neurological Function with the Mediation of Psychological Capital in Students

 Bullying at school has attracted the attention of parents and school staff who are concerned about the safety and mental health of students. Bullying is a disturbing behavior that a person or a group of people intentionally does repeatedly over some time and involves an imbalance of power. The power imbalance can be physical, where the bully is physically stronger than the victim. On the other hand, in adolescents with disorders and maladaptive behaviors in different environments, there are slight defects in the activity of neurotransmitters that started in the early stages of life and made them more vulnerable to the unfavorable environmental and family conditions they have. In this regard, neuropsychological function, which is considered one of the most effective processes of cognitive function, plays an effective role in curbing conduct disorder and aggressive behaviors along with adolescent bullying. Poor neurological performance is a precursor to future learning disabilities and behavioral disorders, which can manifest in parent-child conflicts or with peers in school environments. New findings support the use of neurological tests to distinguish between bullies and healthy people. Although there are contradictory findings in studies about the difference between bullies and healthy people. Psychological capital is one of the psychological indicators of positivism with characteristics such as a person's belief in his abilities to achieve success, persistence in pursuing goals, creating positive documents about himself, and tolerance. Making problems is defined. Having psychological capital enables people to cope better with stressful situations, to be less stressed, to be more resilient in the face of problems, to have a clear view of themselves, and less they are affected by daily events, so such people have higher psychological health. The tendency to bully has been investigated mostly from the perspective of environmental and educational factors. Factors such as the complexity of these disorders, their coexistence with other neurological disorders, increasing statistics in the field of bullying tendencies in students, loss of academic motivation, and also mental injuries, double the necessity of examining psychological variables related to it. And also, although various research has been conducted on the prevention of bullying and its effect on reducing physical and mental health, the tendency to bully remains one of the important problems in schools. Therefore, all those involved in education and training should make confronting bullying behaviors an important goal in education and training. Considering that bullying in school is a serious threat to the mental health of students and all those who are somehow involved in this issue, it is essential to conduct effective and serious research to prevent it. Given the above, the present study aims to answer the question, is the structural model of bullying tendency based on neurological function with the mediation of psychological capital in male students of the first secondary level of district 5 of Tehran suitable?

The current research method is correlational and structural equation modeling (SEM). The statistical population of the research was made up of all 560 male students of the first secondary school in the ninth grade in 28 non-profit schools in District 5 of Tehran in the academic year of 2019-2019. 240 people were selected as the sample size by the two-stage cluster method. The data collection tool was the Illinois Bullying Questionnaire (2001), Nejati Neurological Performance Questionnaire (2013), and Psychological Capital Questionnaire (2007). This research used SPSS22 and Amos 23 software to analyze the information obtained from structural regression equation modeling.

The results of the research showed that the path coefficient of neurocognitive function (β = -0.41, p = 0.001), and psychological capital (β = -0.39, p = 0.001) Bullying tendency is significant. Also, the indirect relationship between neurocognitive performance and bullying tendency through psychological capital is meaningful with β=-0.37 at a significance level of p≥0.01.

Therefore, by identifying and improving neuropsychological processes in students in line with parenting management training and providing a rich environment for students, it is possible to take an effective step in preventing bullying. In the above explanation, it can be stated that boys with a tendency to bully show poor performance in the mental processing of communication information and have defects in the quantity and quality of problem-solving strategies, and positive solutions are needed to solve social problems. They use less, which leads to the creation of interpersonal conflicts, generally confirming the Neuro-psychological theory centered on cognition and social behavior. A student with a tendency to bully shows poor performance in decoding and processing information, so the lack of this self-control ability leads to a biased cognitive style and in turn spreads misbehavior and conflicts. creates in different environments, in this way, these students are not able to name negative behaviors, they respond to hostile signs and symptoms more than neutral signs, and in choosing symptoms, they have a biased behavior they do, therefore, relatively, their efforts in curbing behavioral problems do not end in a helpful result. Also, in explaining the above findings, it can be stated that studies based on neuroimaging have suggested the involvement of subcortical and Thalamocortical processes in frontal networks. Under the influence of these findings, the relationship between the neurological pattern related to violence and bullying has been confirmed by neuropsychologists in the last few decades. Cognitive deficits and specific damage in attention and executive functions are the main hypotheses proposed in the field of this disorder.