Discussion

We predicted that as an evolutionarily adaptive behavior, bullying would be positively associated with dating and sexual behavior. Our results offer mixed support for our hypothesized positive link between bullying and dating behavior but more clearly supported our hypothesized positive link between bullying and sexual behavior.

Bullying and Dating Behavior

There were several significant univariate relations between bullying and dating, suggesting that bullying is related to an increased interest in dating (Study 1), an increased likelihood of having dated, and a greater number of dating partners. Although dating is a more distal indicator of reproductive success than sexual behavior, our univariate data nonetheless offer some supporting evidence regarding the potential role of bullying from an adaptive context. Our multivariate data are more mixed, as bullying was a significant predictor of having dated and number of dating partners in Study 2, but not Study 1.

We are therefore somewhat cautious regarding the data on dating and bullying, as the data are not entirely consistent across studies, particularly at the multivariate level. There were some interesting differences between the two studies that may lend some context to our results. The links we observed between age and dating/sexual activity in Study 1 were not surprising given that only a minority of our sample had actually engaged in dating (46%), a prevalence rate that is consistent with previous developmental research on adolescent dating (Connolly et al., 2013). Therefore, the young age of the participants in Study 1 made a positive correlation between age and sexual activity very likely and the strength of this relation likely accounted for most of the variance in the multivariate analyses. In contrast, the majority of participants in Study 2 had begun dating (82%), making age a less salient variable for this sample. Age may also have played a role in the link between victimization and number of dating partners as research has shown that early dating is in fact a risk factor for psychosocial well-being (Zimmer-Gembeck et al., 2001). It may be that during early adolescence, when dating is less normative, dating multiple partners triggers retaliatory same-sex aggression from peers who view the high dating individual as a sexual competitor worth targeting (Leenaars et al., 2008; Vaillancourt, 2013). In their experimental study of undergraduate women, Vaillancourt and Sharma (2011) found strong support for women’s intolerance of female peers who were perceived to be sexually available. Another possibility is that individuals who have numerous dating partners at a young age are placing themselves in low-quality relationships that open themselves up to victimization from their partner and/or hinder their own psychological development to a point where they become targets for their peers (Connolly et al., 2000; Wekerle & Wolfe, 1999). These views promotes a hypothesis of increased dating as the cause of victimization that is in contrast to, but can coexist with, a hypothesis that bullying causes increased dating. The difference between these two outcomes may rest on individual factors such as social dominance. For example, a dominant bully may be able to safely date frequently without being harassed while a subordinate peer might be victimized for their attempts to date frequently. However, given the inconsistency of the findings across the studies, we are cautious in further interpretations of these data.

Attractiveness and likeability were more prominent predictors of dating and sexual behavior in Study 2, perhaps because of the importance of age as a predictor in our younger sample. Likeability was a significant univariate predictor in Study 2 only, and it was a significant multivariate predictor in neither. This suggests that likeability’s associative variance is accounted for by other factors. The results for attractiveness suggest that it predicts having dated at a young age, but when dating may be more normative (i.e., at older ages in Study 2), it instead predicts number of dating partners. Being male was sometimes related to dating, as it significantly predicted having started dating in Study 1 (but not Study 2) and number of partners in Study 2 (but not Study 1).

Thus, with regard to dating, our results somewhat agree with past theoretical predictions (Volk et al., 2012), as well as with the data from Connolly et al. (2000), historical data (Volk et al., 2012), and accounts of general aggression and dating (Pellegrini & Long, 2003). Interestingly, our data also partly agree with the data reported by Arnocky and Vaillancourt (2012) who reported no link between self-reported bullying and whether one was currently dating or not. Our data suggest, at least at the multivariate level, bullying may be a relatively good predictor in some samples (older) but not others (younger). We believe this may be explained, in part, by the increased experience with dating in our older sample, as well as the somewhat variable potential definitions of dating. For example, dating could be interpreted to mean holding hands between classes, or going for coffee, or other similarly low-intensity behavior. Conversely, it could also mean living together, being in a long-term relationship, or being engaged to marry. The range of potential interpretations of dating, combined with our mixed findings and the mixed findings in the literature, suggest that researchers need to be careful in explicitly measuring specific interpretations of dating and that age (as a proxy for experience with dating) needs to be considered. If our younger participants in Study 1 interpreted dating differently than our older participants in Study 2, or differently than did the participants in Connolly et al. (2000) or Arnocky and Vaillancourt (2012), this could account for the variability in the published data on bullying and dating, as might varying interpretations of bullying and its effects (e.g., physical vs social bullying).