Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of School Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jschpsyc Moral disengagement and verbal bullying in early adolescence: A three-year longitudinal study ☆ Marlene Bjärehed a, ⁎ , Robert Thornberg a , Linda Wänström b , Gianluca Gini c a Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, Sweden b Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköping University, Sweden c Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, University of Padova, Italy ARTICLE INFO Action Editor: Lyndsay Jenkins Keywords: Verbal bullying Moral disengagement Early adolescence Longitudinal MLGM ABSTRACT This three-year longitudinal study examined both within- and between-person efects of moral disengagement on verbal bullying perpetration in early adolescence. Data came from the frst four waves (T1–T4, Grades 4 to 7) of an ongoing longitudinal project examining social and moral correlates of bullying in Swedish schools. Participants included 2432 Swedish early adolescents (52% girls; M age at T1 = 10.55 years). Students completed self-report measures of verbal bullying perpetration and moral disengagement. Results of a multilevel growth model showed that verbal bullying increased over time (regression coefcient for Grade was b = 0.04, SE = 0.01, p < .001). Additionally, the verbal bullying trajectories of participants with higher average le- vels of MD were higher (regression coefcient for MD was b = 0.28, SE = 0.02, p < .001) and steeper (regression coefcient for the Grade × MD interaction was b = 0.02, SE = 0.01, p = .018), indicating that these students scored higher on verbal bullying in general and in- creased more in verbal bullying over time, compared to students with lower levels of average MD. Variations around one's own mean of MD over time was also signifcantly associated with concurrent changes in verbal bullying (regression coefcient for time-varying MD was b = 0.21, SE = 0.01, p < .001). 1. Introduction School bullying is commonly viewed as a subset of aggressive behavior. Both are conceptualized as negative acts that harm or attempts to harm others. The key features distinguishing bullying from aggression are repetition over time and the inclusion of a real or perceived power imbalance (e.g., physical strength, status, verbal skills) for bullying (Olweus, 1993). School bullying can take diferent forms (Gladden et al., 2014; Kowalski et al., 2012; Olweus, 1993), including verbal (e.g., name calling and verbal threats), relational (e.g., peer-group exclusion and rumor spreading), and physical (e.g., hitting and pushing) forms. Previous fndings indicate that although there is indeed an overlap between bullying forms (e.g., Bradshaw et al., 2015; Scheithauer et al., 2006), it is also important to separate diferent forms of bullying given that they have been shown to be distinctive constructs linked diferentially to various correlates (e.g., Dukes et al., 2010; Scheithauer et al., 2006; Travlos et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2009). In schools, verbal bullying has consistently been reported as the most common form of bullying, both in national reports in Sweden (e.g., Friends, 2016) and in international studies (e.g., Bradshaw et al., 2015; Craig et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2009; for a https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2020.08.006 Received 16 December 2019; Received in revised form 9 April 2020; Accepted 22 August 2020 ☆ This research was supported by a grant awarded to Robert Thornberg from the Swedish Research Council [Grant Number D0775301]. ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, SE-581 83 Linköping, Sweden. E-mail address: marlene.bjarehed@liu.se (M. Bjärehed). Journal of School Psychology 84 (2021) 63–73 0022-4405/ © 2020 Society for the Study of School Psychology. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T