Mobbning - ett groupthink-fenomen?
En gruppsykologisk fördjupning av mobbning
The purpose of this essay was to examine and shed light on bullying as a groupprocess, a social phenomenon taking place in a school setting, to increase the understanding of the phenomenon. A theoretical overview of the litterature on bullying was made to investigate bullying and to give the reader a view of the researchfield. A total of 77 articles was studied. With the intention of studying bullying from a groupsychology perspective a metaanalysis was performed discussing groupphenomenon such as rolebehavior, responsibility, cohesiveness and norms in comparison to bullying episodes.Stemming from this analysis the question whether bullying can be view as a response to groupthink emerged. This question also constituted the secondary aim of this thesis. Using the material from the first part of the thesis a theoretical discussion was constituted laborating with the hypothesis that bullying can be viewed as a groupthinkphenomenon. Janis' concept of groupthink was used as a basis for the discussion. The conclusion of the analysis was that since bullying is performed in a social setting there's evidence that the group in which the bullying takes place is part of and directly effect the prevalence of bullying. Whether bullying can be seen as a groupthinkphenomenon or not was not concluded and further research is needed to examine the effects of the group in bullying episodes.