Identifying Bully-Defenders and Bully-Victims: Social Status Trajectories Across Middle School Among Chinese Adolescents.

Longitudinal evidence on the association between bullying perpetration and social status remains inconsistent, which may partly stem from insufficient attention to heterogeneity among bullying perpetrators. Drawing on resource control theory, this three-year, six-wave study extended the bistrategic concept to the bullying context by identifying subtypes based on peer-nominated bullying, defending, and victimization and examining their developmental trajectories of social status (popularity and likability). The sample comprised 2,326 Chinese adolescents (97.7% Han Chinese; 51.6% boys; Mage = 12.37 at Wave 1). Latent profile analysis revealed two distinct subgroups of bullies: bully-defenders (5.68%) and bully-victims (23.04%), along with two subgroups of nonbullies. Latent growth curve analysis revealed a compensatory pattern in social-status development across middle school: bully-defenders had higher initial popularity but declined linearly, whereas bully-victims had the lowest initial social status but increased nonlinearly. These findings suggest that defending behavior and victimization experiences may help distinguish bullying perpetrator subtypes and inform subtype-specific interventions.