The relationship between memories for childhood teasing and anxiety and depression in adulthood

Abstract

This study explored the relationship between memories for childhood teasing and anxiety and depression in adulthood. A Teasing Questionnaire (TQ) was developed that measured the degree to which people recall having been teased about 20 different topics during childhood. The TQ was completed by a sample of 514 undergraduates who also completed established measures of anxiety and depression. A one-factor model best accounted for the variance in TQ scores, and the total score was shown to have strong internal consistency. Scores on the TQ were significantly and positively related to scores on measures of current depression, trait anxiety, social anxiety, and anxiety sensitivity. Tests of dependent correlations showed that remembering having been teased during childhood was not differentially related to depression and trait anxiety in adulthood. However, differential relationships between reports of teasing and specific forms of anxiety were shown. Limitations of the study were discussed, as were suggestions for future research in the more general arena of childhood peer relations and adult psychopathology.

Introduction

Scientific study into the problem of bullying¹ during childhood has only a short history. Olweus (1993a), a leading researcher in the area of bullying, explains that research interest arose in the Scandinavian countries after three Norwegian boys committed suicide in 1982, allegedly as a result of severe bullying from their peers. Following this event, the Norwegian government launched a large-scale bullying prevention program, and the research spawned from that program appears to have increased interest in the issue in other countries as well (Olweus, 1993a). The current study explored the possible long-term costs of a specific form of bullying—verbal teasing—in terms of the development of difficulties with anxiety and depression later in life.

According to Olweus (1993a), “a person is bullied when he or she is exposed, regularly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more persons” (p. 9). Studies from different parts of the world suggest that bullying is a common part of childhood (Olweus, 1991, Slee, 1993, Smith, 1991), with one study reporting that 20% of children consider themselves to be victims of bullying (Smith, 1991). Relevant to the current study is the finding that bullying rarely happens to a child only once. Rather, “students who are bullied at a certain period of time also tend to be bullied several years later” (Olweus, 1993a, p. 28).

Important to a discussion on the relationship between bullying and psychological distress is the issue of cause and effect. Olweus (1993a) describes the typical victim of bullying (see Besag, 1989, for a similar portrayal) as anxious, insecure, cautious, sensitive and quiet. Furthermore, these children typically react to being bullied by crying or withdrawing socially. These observations lead to two questions. First, are anxious or sad children more likely to be bullied than are other children? Second, does being bullied cause children to become anxious and depressed?

It is difficult to answer these questions with confidence based on available data, but it seems that both questions may be answered affirmatively—children with certain temperaments may be at increased risk for being bullied by their peers and the experience of being bullied may lead to difficulties with anxiety and depression while the victimization is actually going on and perhaps into the future as well.

The majority of research examining the impact of bullying has explored its immediate effects on social anxiety and depressive symptoms. Studies have shown that higher levels of peer victimization (including verbal teasing) are related to higher levels of social anxiety (Craig, 1998; Walter & Inderbitzen, 1998) and lower levels of social acceptance and social competence (Callaghan & Joseph, 1995; Neary & Joseph, 1994). Victims of bullying also tend to score higher on measures of depression (Callaghan & Joseph, 1995; Craig, 1998; Neary & Joseph, 1994; Slee, 1995) and lower on measures of global self-worth (Callaghan & Joseph, 1995; Neary & Joseph, 1994) than do children who are not victims of bullying.

In contrast to research on the immediate effects of peer victimization on anxiety and depression, there is a dearth of research on its possible long-term effects. A small group of studies does suggest, however, that being subject to peer victimization can have a negative impact on mood years after it has occurred (Fabian & Thompson, 1989; Matsui, Kakuyama, Tsuzuki, & Onglatco, 1996; Olweus, 1993b, Olweus, 1994). A recent unpublished study (McCabe et al., 2000) suggests that being teased or bullied in childhood is also related to social anxiety in adulthood. Clients of an anxiety disorders clinic were asked whether or not they had ever been bullied or severely teased. Eighty-five percent of participants with social anxiety disorder responded affirmatively to this question. Furthermore, participants with social anxiety disorder were significantly more likely to report that they had been bullied or severely teased than were participants with panic disorder (25%) or obsessive–compulsive disorder (56%). No other studies have explored the long-term impact of peer victimization on social anxiety or on anxiety more broadly defined, nor are there any studies in the existing literature that have explored whether being bullied has differential long-term effects on general anxiety and depression. Both questions are addressed in the current study.

Research that has focused on teasing as a specific form of bullying is found primarily in the literature on body image and eating disturbance. A large number of studies have shown that being teased during childhood is related to both body dissatisfaction and eating disturbance in adulthood (e.g., Grilo, Wilfley, Brownell, & Rodin, 1994; Rieves & Cash, 1996; Schwartz, Phares, Tantleff-Dunn, & Thompson, 1999; Thompson, 1996). These studies support the idea that teasing can have detrimental effects on mental health, even years after the teasing has stopped.

It is important to examine what the mechanisms may be for the relationship between childhood peer victimization and psychological distress in adulthood. First, children who are victimized may come to view the world as a dangerous place where they always need to be on alert, setting them up for having long-term difficulties with anxiety—particularly anxiety in social situations. While social anxiety is characterized by a perception that social situations are dangerous and are likely to end in failure (see Clark & Wells, 1995; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997), children who have a history of recurrent victimization have actually experienced the social world in this way. As a result, children who are victimized by their peers may learn to avoid social situations as a mechanism to avoid anxiety, and avoidance of social situations may prevent them from obtaining evidence that disconfirms their beliefs (that they can, in fact, have positive social experiences) and may also preclude them from learning and practicing developmentally-appropriate social skills (Francis & Radka, 1995). In other words, being victimized during childhood may initiate a life-long cycle of social distress and avoidance.

Being bullied consistently during childhood may also contribute to development of a cognitive style that puts people at risk for the development of depression later in life. Besag (1989) discussed the cognitive changes associated with repeated peer victimization. She explains that victims “begin to believe in the abusive name-calling, thinking perhaps that names such as ‘baby’, ‘wimp’, and ‘idiot’ must be true, for otherwise they would have been able to cope with the bullying. Their inability to cope proves that they are inferior. A gradual but pervasive erosion of self-esteem takes place” (p. 53). Besag (1989) also suggests that children may develop learned helplessness if they find themselves unable to get their peers to stop victimizing them. This experience could cause children to develop a more general belief that they have little control over outcomes in their lives, a thinking pattern related to depression (see Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978, for a discussion of the learned helplessness theory of depression).

The current study examined the relationship between memory for teasing in childhood and levels of anxiety and depression in early adulthood. While numerous domains of anxiety (e.g., social anxiety, worry, anxiety sensitivity) were examined, the main focus of this paper was on the relationship between teasing during childhood and social anxiety in adulthood.

As mentioned earlier, teasing is a specific form of bullying or peer victimization. Teasing is defined here as the experience of receiving verbal taunts about appearance, personality or behavior. Existing measures of peer victimization have not adequately tapped this specific problem. First, measures of peer victimization tend to be very broad, rather than focusing on a specific kind of victimization like teasing. For example, Neary and Joseph’s (1994) Peer Victimization Scale asks children whether they were teased, bullied, called horrible names, picked on, hit or pushed around, or laughed at by other children. These items yield a composite peer victimization score, precluding an examination of the unique contribution of verbal teasing. Furthermore, existing measures have focused almost exclusively on the incidence (e.g., in Neary and Joseph’s scale, children were asked to indicate if each item was “really true for me” or “sort of true for me”) or frequency (e.g., on Rigby and Slee’s (1992) Peer Relations Questionnaire, children use a Likert-type scale to indicate how frequently they are victimized by other children) of peer victimization. While these kinds of scales have certainly yielded interesting data, the topics about which children are teased have been sorely ignored.

The few measures that do take “topic of teasing” into account are very limited in scope. For example, both the Physical Appearance Related Teasing Scale (Thompson, Fabian, Moulton, Dunn, & Altabe, 1991) and the Perception of Teasing Scale (Thompson, Cattarin, Fowler, & Fisher, 1995) have focused almost exclusively on the experience of being teased about aspects of physical appearance. To the best of our knowledge, a broader measure of teasing has not yet been developed.

Based on these limitations in the current literature, a Teasing Questionnaire (TQ) was developed for the purposes of this study. The TQ has many unique features. First, it was developed to be used as a retrospective measure, asking adults to recall the things that they were teased about as children. This design is similar to both the Physical Appearance Related Teasing Scale and the Perception of Teasing Scale, yet the TQ was designed to account for the fact that people can be teased about many topics beyond weight and other aspects of physical appearance. In line with the literature on peer victimization in children, the TQ also takes into account the frequency with which people recall having been teased. The TQ asks participants to indicate how frequently they were teased about each topic included in the scale, thus, providing a more detailed account of teasing history than other available measures.

It was predicted that there would be positive correlations between scores on our TQ and levels of depression and anxiety. Regarding anxiety, we specifically proposed that of the domains of anxiety assessed, social anxiety would be most strongly related to memories of teasing. Specifically, we proposed that remembering being teased a great deal during childhood would be related to elevated levels of social anxiety and depression in adulthood. It was unclear whether a history of childhood teasing would be more strongly related to current trait anxiety or to current depression.