The Impact of Personal Values, Gender Stereotypes, and School Climate on Homophobic Bullying: a Multilevel Analysis

Introduction: Schools are among the most homophobic social contexts, where students who do not conform to gender norms are at high risk of stigma and discrimination. Method: Using a multilevel approach, the aim of the current was to examine whether adolescents’ engagement in homophobic bullying behavior was associated with personal values and stereotyped victim-blaming attributions at individual level, and perceptions of school as a community and frequency of teachers’ reaction to bullying incidents at classroom level. Data were collected in 2010. The sample consisted of 2718 Italian middle and high school students (53.2% females; mean age = 15.36, SD =.85) from 144 classrooms. Results: Results showed that self-transcendence values reduced the risk of engaging in homophobic bullying, whereas both self-enhancement values and stereotyped victim-blaming attributions were positively associated with homophobic bullying. At classroom level, only negative perceptions of school as a community had a unique positive contribution on homophobic bullying, over and above other individual and contextual factors. Two cross-level interactions were found, indicating that self-transcendence values had a significant effect in decreasing homophobic bullying in classrooms where teacher support was perceived as low, whereas stereotyped victim-blaming attributions had a significant effect in increasing homophobic bullying in classrooms where teacher support was perceived as high. Conclusion: These findings provide further support to the social-ecological perspective as a useful guiding framework for understanding the complexity of factors predicting homophobic bullying. Policy Implications: Efforts should be made to develop clear anti-bullying school policies explicitly dealing with the issue of homophobic bullying.