PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN Kowalski / TEASING

I Was Only Kidding!: Victims and Perpetrators Perceptions of Teasing

Robin M. Kowalski Western Carolina University Teasing is an interpersonal behavior that some people perceive to be fun and a matter of joking around and that other people view as cruel and a means of hurting someones feelings. These perspectives might reflect the views of perpetrators and victims, respectively. To examine this, 72 male and female participants wrote two narratives, one in which they described an incident when they were teased and another in which they described an event where they perpetrated the teasing. Victims and perpetrators formed very different impressions of the teasing event. Perpetrators perceived the event as more humorous and less damaging than did victims. However, they also reported feeling more guilt than did victims. Most of the incidents recounted by victims focused on physical appearance, followed by relationships and behavior. Perpetrator narratives focused primarily on behavior, followed closely by body parts and appearance. Implications of victim/perpetrator differences regarding teasing and the consequences of teasing are discussed. good fun, then why is there a relationship between depression in 13- to 15-year-old girls and their history of being teased (Schaefer, 1978; Shapiro et al., 1991)? The adage that sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me may not be true after all. Teasing is difficult to define and study because it is a multifaceted phenomenonsome aspects of which have very positive connotations and some aspects of which have very negative connotations. These positive and negative facets of teasing can be seen in the table of contents of a book on teasing that includes the following topics: flirting, gossiping, bullying, sarcasm, and sexual harassment (Feinberg, 1996). Because of its positive and negative connotations, teasing can include benign attempts to joke with others and poke good-natured fun or it can be used aggressively to hurt another persons feelings or to ostracize an individual from the group. It can lead to laughter and camaraderie or it can produce tears and destroy relationships. Depending on the targets current mood and the reactions of others who hear the tease, a particular taunt may be perceived as enjoyable on one occasion but unpleasant on another (Winfrey, 1993). The word tease has roots in the Anglo-Saxon taesan, meaning to tear to pieces, and the French attiser, meaning to feed a fire with fuel (Pawluk, 1989, p. 146; see also Feinberg, 1996). More current uses define teasing as a verbal thrust whose meaning goes beyond the words that bear it. . . . The very essence of a tease is that its
Authors Note: The author would like to thank Thomas Britt, Mark Leary, Michelle McKenzie, and Elsie Howerton for their comments on an earlier version of this article. Thanks also are extended to Cindy Snyder, Ann Simons, Ellen Houston, Rose Pritchett, and Bradley Lewis for their help with data collection. Correspondence may be addressed to Robin Kowalski, Department of Psychology, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC 28723; e-mail: kowalski@wcuvax1.wcu.edu. PSPB, Vol. 26 No. 2, February 2000 231-241 2000 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

In the course of everyday life, people do a lot of mean

and unpleasant things to one another. They embarrass each other, betray one another, complain and nag, hurt each others feelings, make each other feel guilty, and inflict many other sorts of psychological distress. Collectively, behaviors such as these have been termed aversive interpersonal behaviors (Kowalski, 1997). One of the more enigmatic of these aversive interpersonal behaviors is teasing. Although many people associate teasing with humor and joking, few of us are immune to the biting, caustic, and hurtful nature of some teases. Ironically, no matter how threatening a tease is to the recipient, the teaser can always claim that he or she was only kidding and, by doing so, seemingly disavow himself or herself of any responsibility for harmful effects resulting from the tease. If, indeed, people are just kidding, then why do high school students list as their primary fear the fear of being teased (Schaefer, 1978; Shapiro, Baumeister, & Kessler, 1991)? If teasing is all in 231

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meaning is always open to interpretation particularly by the person on the receiving end (Winfrey, 1993, p. 66). Similarly, Shapiro et al. (1991) suggest that teasing involves a combination of aggression, wit, and ambiguity. The Oxford English Dictionary (1993) defines teasing as a mildly annoying, harassing, or irritating occurrence done in sport or mischief. Commonly used synonyms for tease include annoy, badger, joke, josh, kid, beleaguer, belittle, clown around, harass, humiliate, rib, and ridicule. As suggested by these conceptualizations, part of the ambiguity underlying teasing arises from the targets difficulty in understanding the motives of the person initiating the tease. Is the teaser just joking around or is he or she attempting to ridicule or humiliate? When asked to list the reasons why people teased, participants in one study (Watts, 1998) displayed considerable diversity in the reasons they cited. Among the factors participants listed for why people tease were for fun, as a joke, to be liked, to hurt others, to make others laugh, to aggravate and annoy others, and to make others feel inferior. Given the contradictory nature of these motives, the difficulty that victims may have in interpreting a perpetrators motive for teasing is not hard to comprehend. Similarly, when asked why they thought other children teased, some children reported because they want to look cool or because it lets everyone know that theyve got the power. Still another child said, Sometimes when you see someone who looks different its scary. Like you might think the same thing could happen to you. Teasing is like a magic shield for some kids (BandAids and Blackboards, 1997). By teasing others who are different, children can distance themselves from frightening stimuli. In another examination of the motives stated by children who perpetrated teases, Shapiro et al. (1991) found that the most common causes were to get someone back for teasing them, to play or joke around, to indicate that they disliked the target, or to make themselves feel better when they were in a bad mood. Based on the results of their study, Shapiro et al. suggested that teasing was a way of establishing social dominance, a means of promoting conformity within a group, and a mechanism to disguise ones true feelings and intentions. Teasing can have both positive and negative effects on the instigators and the targets of the tease. On the positive side, teasing may be used to demonstrate camaraderie and to strengthen social bonds with the target of the tease (Eder, 1991, 1993; Sharkey, 1992). On the negative side, teasing may be a means of strengthening social bonds with people other than the target by ostracizing the target. Not surprisingly, the target who is teased out of a social group is likely to experience depression and

reduced self-esteem (Hazler, 1994; Hazler, Hoover, & Oliver, 1993). So, when does teasing become aversive? When are teases labeled good or acceptable teases and when are they labeled bad or unacceptable teases? Consistent with research on hurt feelings (Leary, Springer, Negel, Ansell, & Evans, 1998), teasing appears to become aversive when it is perceived to indicate relational devaluation, that is, when it indicates to the target that the teaser does not regard his or her relationship with the person to be as important, close, or valuable as the person desires (Leary et al., 1988, p. 1225). According to Leary et al. (1998), who found teasing to be one of the seven primary elicitors of hurt feelings, teasing may be interpreted as veiled criticism, or as an indication that the perpetrator does not adequately value the victim or the relationship (p. 1233). The relational devaluation may be unintentional on the part of the teaser but the feelings of embarrassment, identity challenge, and in some instances, exclusion are enough to suggest its presence to the target of the tease. Thus, teasing that implies interpersonal rejection and social exclusion (i.e., bad teasing) is perceived very differently from teasing that promotes camaraderie and social inclusion (i.e., good teasing). Victims and Perpetrators Perceptions of Teasing If there were no ambiguity in the perceived motives behind teasing, and if teasing never involved relational devaluation, perpetrators and targets of teasing might not be expected to differ in their perceptions of a teasing interaction. However, research on other aversive interactions, such as bullying (Besag, 1989; Ross, 1996), hurtful exchanges (Leary et al., 1998), and interpersonal conflict (Baumeister, Stillwell, & Wotman, 1990), suggests that victims and perpetrators frequently form very different perceptions of the interaction. Relative to victims, perpetrators minimize the negative impact of their behavior, view their behaviors more benignly, perceive the behavior as motivated by rational motives, and see the consequences of their behavior as more limited in scope. As with other aversive interpersonal behaviors, what is ultimately most important is how the tease is perceived by the victim (Kowalski, 1997). According to Winfrey (1993), whether a tease turns out to be humorous or demeaning depends in part on how the target reactsor fails to react (p. 66). The frequency with which people tease and their reactions when teased may depend on the persons early experiences with teasing (Georgesen, Harris, Milich, & Bosko-Young, 1999). People who have had favorable experiences with teasing in the past will likely respond positively to other teasing encounters. On the other

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hand, people who have been mercilessly teased or who have been adversely affected by teases in the past will respond more negatively. Personality variables also moderate perceptions of teasing behaviors (Georgesen et al., 1999). For example, Georgesen et al. found that people high in agreeableness evaluated a videotaped teasing interaction more favorably than did people low in agreeableness. Participants high in neuroticism evaluated the same videotaped encounter less favorably than did people low in neuroticism. In addition, because of differences in the ways in which men and women are socialized, gender differences in perceptions of teasing behavior would be expected. Men and women have different styles of teasing (Winfrey, 1993). Consistent with their relational orientation, womens teasing tends to be more playful and relationship-enhancing, whereas mens teasing is harsher and more likely to be relationship-demeaning (Eder, 1993). Furthermore, the content of mens and womens teases may be gender-specific, such that women are inclined to tease about more feminine issues and men about more masculine issues. Indeed, Shapiro et al. (1991) found only one gender difference in childrens reports of teasing; specifically, girls were more likely than boys to tease about physical appearance. Gender differences in teasing also appear to depend on the age of the participants. Through the preschool years, boys and girls tease in much the same way. After preschool, however, boys teasing takes on a more insidious quality, relative to girls teases (Ross, 1996). Relative to women, men are socialized to tease more frequently and to handle being teased more effectively. Because of these differential patterns of socialization, mens and womens feelings about teasing someone else or about being the victim of teasing would be expected to differ. The present study was designed to examine differences in victims and perpetrators accounts of teasing episodes. Because of the ethical considerations involved with teasing participants in a laboratory setting, we relied on the use of autobiographical narratives. The efficacy of this methodology has been demonstrated by Baumeister and his colleagues in their study of anger (Baumeister et al., 1990), masochism (Baumeister, 1988, 1989), and guilt (Leith & Baumeister, 1998) and by Leary et al. (1998) in their study of hurt feelings. In the present study, each participant was assigned to write two autobiographical narratives, one that described an incident in which they were teased by someone else and another in which they perpetrated the tease. Although it would be ideal to have both victim and perpetrator accounts of the same teasing episode, the

nature of this methodology prohibited reaching this ideal. Instead, it is important to note that each participant assumed both a victim and a perpetrator role. Victims and perpetrators were expected to have very different perceptions of teasing episodes, with victims perceiving the episodes more negatively than did perpetrators. Relative to victims, perpetrators were expected to downplay the adverse effects of their teasing and to see the situation as more humorous. Furthermore, the long-term effects of teasing were hypothesized to be more serious for victims than for perpetrators.
METHOD

Participants Fifty female and 22 male undergraduate students participated in partial fulfillment of a course research 1 requirement. The mean age of the participants was 22.4 (range 18-44), and more than 96% of the individuals taking part were Caucasian. Students participated in groups ranging in size from 10 to 30. To assure privacy, participants did not interact with one another at any time during the session. Procedure After signing a consent form, each participant was instructed to write two narratives. The order in which the narratives were written was counterbalanced. In one narrative, participants wrote about an event when they were teased by someone else. The instructions were as follows:
Please write a true story from your life about a time that you were teased. Nearly everyone has experienced being teased on more than one occasion; please choose an especially powerful and memorable experience of being teased. Be as thorough and complete as you can and tell the full story about the instance in which you were teased.

The other narrative focused on an incident in which they teased another individual. The instructions for this narrative resembled those for the victim narrative in every respect except that instead of writing about being teased, they wrote about a time when they were the teaser. Thus, in one story, participants were the victims of a tease, and in the other, the participants were the perpetrators. After writing each narrative, participants completed a questionnaire examining their perceptions of the experience. To examine participants views of the positive features of the teasing situation, they were asked to rate how humorous they perceived the situation to be and the degree to which they thought their self-esteem was raised as a function of the teasing event. These questions were

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TABLE 1: Percentages of Teases Falling Within Each Content Category Victim Content Relationships Appearance Behavior Intelligence Medical conditions Stereotyping/ social group Other Male 27.3 27.3 13.6 4.5 0.0 9.1 18.2 Female Overall 4.0 52.0 10.0 10.0 10.0 2.0 10.0 11.2 45.1 11.2 8.5 7.0 4.2 12.7 Male 27.3 9.1 27.3 4.5 9.1 9.1 13.6 Perpetrator Female Overall 12.0 30.0 32.0 12.0 4.0 4.0 6.0 16.7 23.6 30.6 9.7 5.6 5.6 8.3

answered using 12-point scales with five scale labels (not at all, slightly, moderately, very, and extremely). Participants also indicated how positively they viewed the other individual and how positively they perceived they were viewed by the other person. Responses were again made using 12-point scales with five scale labels (not at all positively, somewhat positively, moderately positively, very positively, and extremely positively). Because of the negative features that some people assign to teasing incidents, a second set of questions examined participants perceptions of the negative features of the incident recounted. Specifically, participants indicated how negatively they felt about the experience, how negatively they perceived the other person to feel, the degree to which their self-esteem was lowered by the teasing encounter, how annoyed they felt, and how guilty they felt. Participants responded to each of these items using 12-point scales with five scale labels (not at all to extremely). A third set of questions examined participants prior experience with teasing. They also were asked how frequently they were teased by others and how frequently they teased other people. Twelve-point scales with five scale labels (not at all to extremely) were again used.
RESULTS

TABLE 2: Percentages of Teases Falling Within Each Relationship Category Victim Relationship Romantic partner Schoolmates Friends Relatives Male Female Overall Male Perpetrator Female Overall

Content Analyses of Narratives All narratives, both victim and perpetrator, were content analyzed along two dimensions: content of the tease and the relationship between the victim and perpetrator. To assess interrater reliability, two raters independently coded the narratives. Interrater reliability for both content and relationship exceeded .80. After reading all of the teasing narratives, seven categories were derived to classify the content of all of the teases: relationships (e.g., teasing or being teased about the absence of a relationship, ones partner and his or her characteristics, sexual behaviors), body parts/ appearance, behavior (e.g., walking, dancing, clumsiness), intelligence, medical conditions, stereotyping/ social group (e.g., age, ethnicity), and other (e.g., name). Each of the narratives was then read again and classified using this coding scheme. Each narrative was coded as belonging to only one content category. Victims. Consistent with research on childrens teasing (Shapiro et al., 1991), more than 45% of the victim narratives focused on physical appearance (e.g., being fat, having a large nose), followed by relationships (11.2%) and behavior (11.2%). For example, one individual wrote,
When I was young and even in middle school I recall people picking on me about my nose. They would call me

0.0 57.1 33.3 9.5

4.1 55.1 24.4 16.3

2.9 55.7 27.2 14.3

10.0 20.0 65.0 5.0

17.0 25.5 31.9 36.2

14.9 23.9 34.3 26.9

banana nose and Pinocchio and ask if they could slide down my nose sometime. Ridiculous stuff, but I was very insecure and it killed me. I would go home or in the bathroom at school and cry and cry. It was miserable.

A breakdown of the content of the teases by type of narrative and gender is provided in Table 1. A chi-square analysis by gender conducted on the content areas revealed a significant gender difference, 2(6) = 15.01, p < .02. For women, by far the largest percentage of teases dealt with body parts/appearance (52%). Men also were teased frequently about their appearance (27.3%) but were teased equally often about their relationships (27.3%). The relationship between the teasing victim and perpetrator was coded as falling within one of four categories: romantic partners, friends, schoolmates, and relatives. As shown in Table 2, in more than half of the teasing episodes recounted by victims, the victim and perpetrator were schoolmates (55.7%). The teasing episodes recounted by male and female victims did not differ significantly in the relationship between victim and perpetrator, 2(3) = 1.77, p > .62. Both male and female victims were teased most frequently by schoolmates.

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TABLE 3: Main Effects of Role (victim/perpetrator) Item Victim Perpetrator

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How negatively did you feel about the experience? 9.1 (3.3) How negatively do you think the other person felt? 2.9 (2.8) To what degree was your self-esteem raised? 2.1a (2.3) To what degree was your self-esteem lowered? 7.5 (4.1) How annoyed were you by the experience? 10.0 (3.1) How guilty did you feel about the experience? 2.6 (2.8) How humorous did you perceive the experience to be? 2.8 (3.2) How positively do you view the other individual involved? 4.8 (3.6) How positively do you think the individual views you? 5.8 (3.5) Negative emotionality (LIWC) 3.5 (2.5) Positive emotionality (LIWC) 2.2a (1.7) References to self (LIWC) 11.3 (2.6) References to other (LIWC) 3.3 (3.4) Total word count (LIWC) 103.7 (57.5) Exclamation marks (LIWC) .41 (1.3)

4.9 (3.5) 8.3 (4.0) 3.3a (3.1) 3.1 (2.8) 3.6 (3.3) 5.5 (3.8) 7.2 (3.7) 7.4 (3.9) 7.1 (3.7) 4.5 (3.4) 2.1a (1.8) 8.8 (3.9) 8.3 (3.7) 87.6 (42.5) .12 (.47)

NOTE: LIWC = Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. Means in a single row sharing a common subscript do not differ significantly, p > .05. Standard deviations are reported in parentheses.

Perpetrators. The seven categories used to content analyze the victim narratives also were used for the perpetrator narratives. As shown in Table 1, the largest percentages of teases dealt with behavior (30.6%), followed closely by body parts/appearance (23.6%). The teasing episodes of male and female perpetrators did not differ significantly in the type of tease instigated, 2(3) = 9.53, p > .14. In general, the narratives in which participants reported teasing another individual involved people with whom the individual was either a friend (34.3%) or a relative (26.9%). When examined by gender, however, this overall pattern changes, 2(3) = 13.53 p < .003. For men, the relationship between the victim and perpetrator was usually a friendship (65.0%), followed by schoolmates (20.0%). Women, on the other hand, were more likely to tease relatives (36.2%) than schoolmates (25.5%) or friends (31.9%). Linguistic Analysis A text analysis was conducted on each of the participants teasing narratives using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count strategy (LIWC) (Francis & Pennebaker, 1994). This computer software analyzes the affective, cognitive, and structural elements of written text on a word-by-word basis. Sixty-one output variables are pro-

duced, some of which reflect structural elements of the writing (e.g., word count, exclamation marks) and some of which are grouped into composite variables reflecting negative emotionality, positive emotionality, cognitive mechanisms, self-references, other references, and negations. In addition to the structural elements of word count and proportion of exclamation marks used, we were interested in this study in the composite variables of negative emotionality, positive emotionality, selfreferences, and other references. The negative emotionality profile is calculated based on words such as angry, ashamed, and worthless. Positive emotionality, on the other hand, reflects words such as excitement, peace, and security. Split-plot analyses of variance with sex (male/female) as the betweenparticipants factor and role (victim/perpetrator) as the within-participants factor were conducted on these composite variables. A main effect of role was obtained on the negative emotionality variable, F(1, 70) = 5.34, p < .02. Interestingly, participants narratives reflected more negative emotionality when they wrote about teasing another person as opposed to being teased. Part of this may reflect the remorse and guilt that many participants reported when they wrote about teasing others. No significant effects were obtained with the positive emotionality variable (see Table 3). Analyses of the number of references to self and other revealed that participants used more self-references when they wrote about being teased compared to teasing another, F(1, 70) = 15.28, p < .001. Conversely, more references to other were used when writing about teasing another than when writing about being teased, F(1, 70) = 47.72, p < .001. (Means are reported in Table 3.) However, this effect was moderated by the gender of the participant, F(1, 70) = 12.22, p < .001. In the narratives in which participants described episodes where they were teased by others, men (M = 5.1, SD = 4.6) used significantly more other references than did women (M = 2.4, SD = 2.5). In addition, women used more other references when their narratives concerned teasing others (M = 8.8, SD = 3.9) than when they focused on being teased (M = 2.4, SD = 2.5), ps < .05. From a structural perspective, participants used significantly more words when writing about being teased than about teasing, F(1, 70) = 6.90, p < .01. The proportion of exclamation marks used also was greater in narratives dealing with being teased than with teasing, F(1, 70) = 4.40, p < .04. Post-Narrative Questions Two-by-two split-plot analyses of variance with sex as the between-participants factor and role as the withinparticipants factor were conducted on the remaining dependent variable measures. Overall, participants felt

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more negatively about the experience when they were the victim of a tease than when they perpetrated the tease, F(1, 69) = 47.63, p < .001. (Means for the role main effect are reported in Table 3.) A main effect of gender obtained on negativity ratings revealed that men (M = 5.8, SD = 3.6) felt less negatively about the experience than did women (M = 7.6, SD = 3.3), F(1, 69) = 7.20, p < .01. The analysis of the question that asked how participants perceived the other person felt as a result of the teasing incident revealed a main effect of role, F(1, 68) = 77.04, p < .001. Relative to victims, who perceived that the perpetrators felt mildly negative about the teasing event, perpetrators rated victims as feeling very negative about the experience. Two items examined the influence of the experience on participants self-esteem. One question assessed the degree to which the experience raised participants selfesteem and the other assessed the degree to which the experience lowered self-esteem. The analysis of the selfesteem enhancing effects of the experience revealed an interaction of sex and role, F(1, 69) = 6.03, p < .02. When recounting an event in which they were teased, men (M = 3.3, SD = 3.1) reported that their self-esteem was raised more than was reported by women (M = 1.6, SD = 1.6). However, women reported that their self-esteem was raised more when they perpetrated a tease (M = 3.5, SD = 3.2) than when they were teased (M = 1.6, SD = 1.6), ps < .05. It is important to note, however, that, overall, participants reported their self-esteem to be only slightly affected in the positive direction by the experience. The negative effects of teasing on self-esteem were more pronounced. First, womens (M = 5.8, SD = 3.4) self-esteem was lowered more than mens (M = 4.4, SD = 3.5), F(1, 69) = 4.32, p < .04. In addition, as shown in Table 3, victims of teasing reported more detrimental effects on their self-esteem than were reported by perpetrators, F(1, 69) = 38.07, p < .001. Main effects of role also were obtained on questions examining how annoyed participants were by the experience, F(1, 69) = 146.48, p < .001, how much guilt they felt, F(1, 69) = 15.15, p < .001, and how humorous they found the experience to be, F(1, 69) = 48.01, p < .001. Participants were more annoyed when they were the victim as opposed to the perpetrator. On the other hand, although participants not surprisingly reported finding the experience more humorous when they perpetrated the tease than when they were teased, they also experienced more guilt as the perpetrator than as the victim (see Table 3). The role main effect obtained on how guilty participants felt about the experience was qualified by an interaction of sex and role, F(1, 69) = 9.72, p < .003. Whereas mens reports of the amount of guilt experienced did not differ as a function of whether they were the victim

(M = 3.5, SD = 4.0) or perpetrator of the tease (M = 4.0, SD = 3.7), women reported significantly more guilt when they initiated the tease (M = 6.0, SD = 3.7) than when they were the victim (M = 2.2, SD = 2.1), ps < .05. Main effects of role also were obtained on ratings of how positively participants viewed the other individual, F(1, 69) = 12.95, p < .001, and how positively they thought the other individual viewed them, F(1, 69) = 4.94, p < .03. As would be expected, perpetrators viewed the targets more favorably than victims viewed perpetrators. On the other hand, perpetrators perceived that they were viewed more favorably by victims than victims thought they were viewed by perpetrators (see Table 3). Intercorrelations between these post-narrative questions and the composites created by the LIWC strategy can be found in Table 4 for victims responses and in Table 5 for perpetrators responses. Although most of these correlations were nonsignificant, a few are worthy of note. Perpetrators who felt guilty about teasing someone else used fewer self-references in their narratives (r = .27). By contrast, the more humorous they perceived the incident to be, the more self-references they employed (r = .27). Victims used fewer words in their narrative the more negatively they felt about being teased (r = .28). In addition, victims who reported that the teasing incident had positive effects on their selfesteem wrote longer narratives (r = .27) and used more other references in these narratives (r = .27). Two additional questionnaire items examined the frequency with which participants reported being teased and the frequency with which they reported teasing others. An ANOVA by gender conducted separately on these two items revealed no significant differences between men and women in their perceptions of the frequency with which they were teased by others, F(1, 70) = .01, p > .93. Both men (M = 4.5, SD = 2.5) and women (M = 4.6, SD = 2.5) indicated that they were teased occasionally. However, men (M = 5.5, SD = 2.7) reported teasing others more frequently than did women (M = 3.9, SD = 2.2), F(1, 70) = 6.87, p < .01.
DISCUSSION

Casual observation of our own or other peoples behavior immediately highlights individual differences in perceptions of teasing behavior. Whereas some people enjoy a good laugh when they are teased, others feel humiliated, rejected, and excluded. In addition, whereas some people rarely tease, others could be labeled chronic teasers. Even for a single individual, situational variables can alter both the likelihood of teasing someone else as well as the reaction generated in response to a tease. Given the variability in perceptions of teasing, the present study tested the hypothesis that

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TABLE 4: Intercorrelations of LIWC Categories and Victim Post-Narrative Questions Word Count How negatively did you feel about the experience? How negatively do you think the other person felt? To what degree was your self-esteem raised? To what degree was your self-esteem lowered? How annoyed were you by the experience? How guilty did you feel about the experience? How humorous did you perceive the experience to be? How positively do you view the other individual involved? How positively do you think the individual views you? NOTE: LIWC = Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. *p < .05. **p < .01. .28* .02 .27* .17 .13 .07 .10 .16 .27* Exclamation Marks .19 .04 .11 .22 .05 .05 .30* .01 .02 Negative Emotionality .03 .01 .01 .06 .09 .17 .08 .005 .07 Positive Emotionality .08 .11 .11 .09 .09 .09 .16 .03 .11 SelfReferences .14 .12 .12 .06 .08 .04 .09 .13 .005

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Other References .11 .31** .27* .17 .04 .16 .15 .12 .008

TABLE 5: Intercorrelations of LIWC Categories and Perpetrator Post-Narrative Questions Word Count How negatively did you feel about the experience? How negatively do you think the other person felt? To what degree was your selfesteem raised? To what degree was your selfesteem lowered? How annoyed were you by the experience? How guilty did you feel about the experience? How humorous did you perceive the experience to be? How positively do you view the other individual involved? How positively do you think the individual views you? NOTE: LIWC = Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. *p < .05. **p < .01. .04 .005 .26* .17 .05 .08 .11 .007 .26* Exclamation Marks .21 .17 .07 .12 .01 .07 .21 .11 .06 Negative Emotionality .16 .06 .10 .13 .19 .05 .22 .10 .07 Positive Emotionality .06 .19 .06 .12 .08 .16 .08 .08 .15 SelfReferences .13 .03 .12 .12 .16 .27* .27* .09 .04 Other References .13 .13 .22 .04 .01 .02 .06 .06 .01

victims and perpetrators would have different perceptions of teasing encounters. Consistent with predictions and with previous research, victims and perpetrators perceived teasing episodes differently. Relative to victims, perpetrators not surprisingly perceived the incident to be more humorous. In addition, whereas perpetrators did not perceive the teasing encounters to be particularly annoying, victims reported being very annoyed by them. Perpetrators also reported higher feelings of guilt relative to victims. Perhaps reflecting these feelings of guilt, recollections of episodes in which the participant perpetrated the tease contained more negative emotionality than did victim accounts. Victim/perpetrator differences also were obtained on the variables that examined how they viewed the other individual and how they thought the other individual viewed them. Victims perceived that they were viewed less positively than perpetrators said they viewed them. Perpetrators, on the other hand, thought they

were viewed more favorably than victims actually perceived them. Four explanations may account for this. First, victims may have misinterpreted the motives of the perpetrator and viewed the tease as more malevolent than was the case. Thus, although the perpetrators intent was to have fun with the target, the target perceived that the perpetrator was trying to hurt him or her and thus inferred that he or she did not like the target. In other words, they perceived the perpetrators behavior to indicate relational devaluation (Leary et al., 1998). The target may wonder why else beyond personal dislike another person would have been so cruel. Given that people have a tendency to assume the worst about how they are viewed by others (Goffman, 1959), such misunderstandings between victims and perpetrators are understandable. Second, perpetrators may have teased because they disliked some aspect of the target but were unwilling to admit so in the experiment. Third, even if perpetrators actually viewed the target negatively at the time of the incident, the passage of time and personal

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feelings of guilt may have led them to regard the target more favorably. Fourth, victims negative evaluations of perpetrators may have become more negative with the passage of time. The content of some of the narratives, particularly those written by victims, suggested that many of the victims had ruminated about the teasing incident since its initial occurrence. These ruminations might have magnified the event in the victims mind, thereby enhancing negative feelings that he or she had about the incident and the individual who perpetrated it. Indeed, research has shown that mental rumination about negative events increases and prolongs negative affect associated with the event (Morrow & NolenHoeksema, 1990; Nolen-Hoeksema, 1987). Given how they thought they were perceived by the other individual, victims and perpetrators not surprisingly differed in the effects of the teasing incident on their self-esteem. Victims reported more negative effects on their self-esteem than did perpetrators. Teasing may be aversive because it is threatening to the self (Alberts, Kellar-Guenther, & Corman, 1996). Teasers characterize the victim in negative ways and often impose an identity on the victim that is inconsistent with his or her selfperception. If the tease is perceived by the victim as an indication that the perpetrator does not adequately value his or her relationship with the victim, then the victims self-esteem is likely to be affected (Leary et al., 1998). In some cases, the victim may internalize the negative characterization and come to view himself or herself less positively than before. Also of note is the finding that perpetrators were well aware of the negative effects of their teasing. In response to the question asking victims and perpetrators how they thought the other person felt as a result of the teasing encounter, victims rated perpetrators as feeling mildly negative about the incident, whereas perpetrators rated victims as feeling very negatively about being teased. Perpetrators knowledge of the negative feelings induced by the teasing may have facilitated the feelings of guilt that perpetrators reported. Content of Teases The overwhelming majority of the victim narratives and a notable percentage of the perpetrator narratives focused on body parts and physical appearance. Several reasons may account for the predominance of appearance-related teasing. Because physical appearance represents a readily observable feature, it is an easy target for teasing. Physical appearance is also a primary factor influencing perceptions of social approval and acceptance.2 For a perpetrator who desires to hurt his or her victim, a key means of doing this is to imply, through teasing about appearance, that the person is not socially acceptable. Furthermore, those who tease for malevo-

lent reasons may choose to tease about anothers body parts or physical appearance because of the targets inability to control many of these features. Relatedly, negative evaluations of ones appearance as opposed to other dimensions of the self, such as scholastic aptitude, are more predictive of global self-evaluations (Harter, 1993; Kowalski, 1998). Thus, bad teases about anothers physical appearance are particularly likely to induce hurt feelings and negative self-evaluations, making them particularly salient to victims. In addition, because people who are physically attractive are perceived as more sociable, intelligent, psychologically adjusted, and socially skilled (Feingold, 1992), teases about appearance perhaps more than any other type of tease may be used by perpetrators to convey dislike, relational devaluation, and social exclusion. Gender differences that were observed in relation to the content categories (e.g., women reporting more appearance-related teasing relative to men), although consistent with what one might expect, should be interpreted cautiously. These differences may reflect discrepancies between men and women in the salience of particular types of teases rather than the frequency with which those teases are actually perpetrated. For example, men and women may be teased equally about aspects of their appearance. However, when being asked to retrospectively recall episodes of teasing, those related to appearance may be more salient to women than to men, in large part because of societys emphasis on womens physical appearance. Interestingly, women were more likely than men to perpetrate teases about physical appearance. People may tease about those things about which they are sensitive because they assume that others will be sensitive about those topics as well. The topics about which men and women were teased may shed some light on the fact that teasing had a greater effect on womens self-esteem relative to mens. As noted earlier, relative to relationships, about which men were teased most frequently, people have less control over their body parts and their physical appearance, about which women were teased most frequently. Because of the less changeable nature of the content of the tease, women may be more adversely affected by teasing than are men. In addition, due to socialization, aspects of appearance are perhaps more central to a womans identity than relationships are to a mans. Womens self-ratings of attractiveness and self-esteem are highly correlated, which suggests that they may be particularly susceptible to negative evaluations of appearance. For men, on the other hand, the relationship between physical attractiveness and self-esteem is less strong (Harter, 1993).

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Relationship Between Victim and Perpetrator All of the teasing incidents involved victims and perpetrators who were acquainted with one another. Not a single narrative involved an individual being teased by a stranger or teasing a stranger. One reason for this is that teases, whether motivated by benevolent or malevolent concerns, miss their mark with strangers. The ambiguity that characterizes a tease is very difficult to achieve when the perpetrator and target do not know one another. Imagine jokingly commenting on a strangers Pinocchio nose. The consequences of such an encounter would more than likely be very undesired. In addition, because we have more information about those with whom we are close, we have more ammunition that can be used against them, even in a joking manner (Miller, 1997). We are also less likely to inhibit our teasing comments with close others, knowing that, even if they are offended, they will recover from any negative effects of the tease and the relationship will continue as before. Teasing or being teased by close friends or relatives presents something of a paradox. On one hand, because the person is close to us, he or she is allowed more liberty in teasing than acquaintances would be. On the other hand, because they are close to us, they should know which topics are sensitive ones and, therefore, should not be the basis of teasing. Consequences of Teasing The long-term, primarily negative impact of the teasing incident on the victims was clear in victims ratings as well as in the narratives themselves. Many of the victims wrote about the teasing incident as being something that they will never forget or as an event that they vividly remember. Many of them also mentioned specifically how hurtful the teasing was. One individual, in describing how her brother used to tease her about her hair (he told her that she looked like she was wearing a permanent football helmet), stated that it does not sound like much but the teasing was a constant occurrence and I still have bad feelings about it. Statements such as this convey victims feelings that teasers do not value them or their relationship. This perception is reflected by a narrative statement made by an individual whose feelings had been hurt by being teased, Why . . . would he say such a thing if he cared about our friendship (Leary et al., 1998, p. 1234). Similar long-term residual effects of teasing were reported by Cash (1995) in his research on appearancerelated teasing. Of the women he surveyed, 70% indicated that they sometimes or often thought about the experience. Other research has found a relationship between appearance-related teasing and subsequent body image dissatisfaction (Cattarin & Thompson, 1994;

Thompson, Cattarin, Fowler, & Fisher, 1995). Clearly, teasing can have prolonged, sometimes permanent, effects on the target. The effects observed with the LIWC categories also could be interpreted as indicative of the degree of hurt still experienced by the victims. Relative to perpetrators, victims narratives were longer and used more firstperson references. Relative to perpetrators, victims may hold more vivid and more detailed memories of teasing encounters, a factor that would be expected if one had been hurt by a particular interaction. Thus, the victims had more information to convey in their narratives. Perhaps more surprising than the long-term effects of teasing on the victims were the negative effects recounted by perpetrators. After thinking back on the instances in which they teased someone else, many perpetrators reported feeling guilty or wondering what happened to the person that they teased. One participant wrote about how she and her middle-school classmates frequently teased a boy who smelled bad. She stated that to this day I have not apologized to him and I have wanted to. I never really wanted to tease him but it was a group thing that everyone did. I regret it happened. Another individual described a situation when she and her fifth-grade friends mercilessly teased another child for being overweight. She stated, When I look back, I feel guilty. She moved during or after fifth grade. I havent seen her since. I hope shes tall, beautiful, and really successful. Other perpetrators reported feeling embarrassed when they were confronted even years later with teases that they perpetrated. The inverse relationship between perpetrators use of first-person references in their narratives and their self-reports of guilt may reflect attempts to distance themselves from their personal involvement in the teasing incident. Many of the victim/perpetrator findings from this study parallel those of other studies in finding that victims not surprisingly view the experience more negatively than do perpetrators. However, whereas Baumeister et al.s (1990) study of victim and perpetrator accounts of anger episodes found that about half of the perpetrators perceived their anger as justifiable and the negative consequences to be minimal, rarely did perpetrators in the present study deny that their teasing had any negative effects. Although some perpetrators appeared to take a neutral stance on the adverse effects of their teasing, many were more forthcoming about the guilt that they felt and about the harm that they may have caused the target. Two reasons may account for this variation across studies. Many of the episodes recounted occurred during middle and high school. Thus, maturation alone may account for some awareness on the part of perpetrators regarding the negative effects of their teasing. In addition, unlike anger or conflict, teasing is

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almost never justified. The victim of teasing rarely if ever deserves to be teased. Thus, whereas perpetrators can more easily justify anger or conflict, they may have more difficulty discounting hurting another. Limitations In spite of the inroads that this article makes into a relatively uncharted area, certain limitations need to be acknowledged. The methodology relies on narrative accounts of teasing episodes that were especially powerful and memorable. Teases that are memorable are those that have left their mark on the individuals involved, often by hurting the victims feelings. Thus, we cannot be sure that the results presented here will generalize to recollections of more mundane teasing episodes. In making comparisons between victim and perpetrator narratives, it is important to note that the narratives in which an individual teased and those in which they were teased reflect different events. This leaves open the possibility that the victim and perpetrator narratives are qualitatively different from one another, thereby undermining any conclusions that might be drawn. However, based on our review of the narratives, we believe that the events recounted in the victim and perpetrator narratives are qualitatively similar. In addition, the unwillingness of some men to participate in the study leads to the question of whether those who did participate represent a different group of individuals from those who chose not to be included. Descriptive statistics showing approximately equal variances for the male and female participants suggested that this was not the case. The gender effects examined in this study were based solely on the gender of the participants. Thus, we do not have information related to the frequency with which men and women were teased by members of each gender. This will be an important area of investigation for future research. Conclusion Everyone has been teased and has teased someone else at least once in their life. Although many of these teases are meant in good fun and are expressed in an effort to convey camaraderie, victims do not always view the teases in this way. Rather, victims frequently perceive teases as hurtful. From the victims perspective, the tease may have conveyed that the perpetrator did not value him or her or their relationship. The tease may have conveyed to the victim that he or she was an unlikable person. As noted by Leary et al. (1998), people who are the victims of teasing may wonder how someone who cared about them could say or do such cruel things. By examining differences in victims and perpetrators perceptions of teasing as well as the content of these teases, this study

supports existing research on victim/perpetrator differences in relation to behaviors other than teasing and contributes to a developing area within psychology.
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