As a parent, my heart broke to read of the November 2021 suicide of Isabella Tichenor, a 10-year-old Utah girl who took her own life after being bullied by her classmates for being Black and having autism. Her parents allegedly pleaded for help from the school district before her death.

In September, Nya Sigin was victimized by a racist cyber attack at the hands of a classmate she had reportedly known since elementary school. Nya suffers from anxiety and depression, and attempted suicide earlier this year. Her mental health struggles were more ammunition for the classmates who bullied her.

The same month, transgender teen Tobi Yandle found himself trapped in a bathroom stall at his Tennessee high school while a group of male students tried to force their way in. Toni braced his body against the door and his foot against the toilet while his classmates yelled transphobic slurs at him.

These attacks illustrate a concept known as identity-based peer victimization (sometimes called bias-based peer aggression), where youth are targeted due to some aspect of their social identity, including race, ethnicity, religious belief, gender, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity, nationality, socioeconomic status, or weight. About 1 in 5 American students are victimized while at school each year, and according to a study in one school district, over 38 percent of victims reported being victimized due to some aspect of their identity. Other research suggests youth who are members of traditionally stigmatized groups—like those identifying as part of the LGBTQ+ community—are victimized more often by classmates than those who are not. Even appearing to be a member of a stigmatized group seems to be associated with a higher risk of victimization; a study of Sikh youth, who are often mistakenly perceived as Muslim, found a victimization rate of 76 percent.

Identity-based peer aggression has negative psychological and behavioral effects, including depression and anxiety, low self-esteem, suicidal ideation, nonsuicidal self-injury, intimate partner violence, and low grades. These outcomes can be even worse when youth are a part of more than one stigmatized group; one study found increases in self-harming behavior among youth who believed they were victimized due to their membership in more than one stigmatized group. 

Investigating Types of Identity-Based Peer Aggression

I used data from a 2017-2018 survey among students at a southern rural high school in the US to investigate identity-based peer aggression more closely, and specifically identity-based verbal peer aggression (name-calling, threats, etc.) and identity-based cyber peer aggression (verbal peer aggression occurring via social media and text) across two years. I looked at verbal peer aggression because it is the most common type of peer aggression students face in schools. And though rates of peer aggression seem to be decreasing in the United States overall, rates of cyber peer aggression continue to rise as students increasingly keep up with one another on social media. 

Looking at these two types of peer aggression also allowed me to see which type hurts victims more, as cyber peer aggression has been associated with worse psychological outcomes (greater likelihood of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts, particularly) in prior research. When looking at the negative outcomes associated with identity-based peer aggression, I included negative emotions like sadness and feeling upset, as well as low self-esteem, social withdrawal, self-harm, and suicide attempts.

Consistent with past research, students who were members of marginalized groups (such as LGBTQ+, minority races) reported higher rates of victimization than their peers. Further, being victimized for who you are was more strongly connected to these outcomes than other types of victimization. This was particularly the case for cyber aggression; identity-based victimization was almost twice as prevalent online as it was in person.  

Feeling Alienated

Why are negative outcomes so much worse for students who are victimized because of their social identity? It could be that the harassment tells these youth that there is something about who they are that makes them an outcast, meriting the harsh treatment from their peers. So I investigated whether feelings of social alienation could be the reason why these outcomes are so much worse for youth victimized due to social identity.

I found that feeling alienated after victimization at least partially explained the outcomes, for both verbal and cyber peer aggression. Those kids who felt the most alienated by their victimization exhibited the worst psychological outcomes, even being more likely to hurt themselves. Perhaps victims of identity-based peer aggression have received the message that an important part of their identity is unacceptable, and if this is due to an unchangeable identity—like race or sexual orientation—that they may always be on the outside looking in.

This message—that part of a person's identity is unacceptable—may be similar to what victims of hate crime experience. Their identity being more or less unchangeable, victims of hate crime may believe that further victimization is inevitable, and they are often right. Evidence shows that hate crimes tend to be more brutal than other violent crimes, involve more victims, and are more likely to be recurrent. The effects of hate crime ripple beyond the initial victim and terrorize the entire community, and those who share the same identity as the victim doubt their own safety. Due to the greater impact of bias-based crime, hate crimes are punished harshly in our society via sentencing enhancement laws. If identity-based peer aggression in American schools is akin to hate crime, perhaps it is time that schools likewise handle identity-based aggression differently from other aggressive incidents.

With evidence demonstrating the particularly negative outcomes associated with identity-based peer aggression, US schools must begin to implement programs designed to increase cooperation between different sociodemographic groups by giving them a common goal (as the jigsaw classroom, for example). Teachers and administrators should concentrate on fostering cooperation among students rather than competition, and make clear classroom expectations that bullying, harassing, or otherwise victimizing others is unacceptable and potentially prejudicial. Schools can set the norm that prejudice is not tolerated.  Understanding and addressing peer aggression as a form of bias could help reduce its prevalence and impact. If youth who victimize feel they are breaking social norms by engaging in the behavior, they may be less likely to do it. And if victims feel they are supported by adults and peers, the consequences—depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and self-harm—may be less severe.


For Further Reading

Utley, J. W. (2022). Identifiable impact: Consequences of identity-based peer aggression in high school. Theses and Dissertations. 5459. https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/td/5459

Utley, J. W., Sinclair, H. C., Nelson, S., Ellithorpe, C., & Stubbs-Richardson, M. (2021). Behavioral and psychological consequences of social identity-based aggressive victimization in high school youth. Self and Identity, 21(1), 61-85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2021.1920049


Jessica Weiss Utley is a fourth-year grad student in Clinical Psychology at Mississippi State University and a mother of two boys, ages 10 and 5. She has been part of the MSU Social Relations Lab since 2017, studying aggression, bullying, and intergroup relations.