i Was Only Kiding

PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETINKowalski / TEASING

“I Was Only Kidding!”: Victims’ andPerpetrators’ Perceptions of Teasing

Robin M. KowalskiWestern Carolina University

Teasing is an interpersonal behavior that some people perceive tobe fun and a matter of joking around and that other people viewas cruel and a means of hurting someone’s feelings. These per-spectives might reflect the views of perpetrators and victims,respectively. To examine this, 72 male and female participantswrote two narratives, one in which they described an incidentwhen they were teased and another in which they described anevent where they perpetrated the teasing. Victims and perpetra-tors formed very different impressions of the teasing event. Perpe-trators perceived the event as more humorous and less damagingthan did victims. However, they also reported feeling more guiltthan did victims. Most of the incidents recounted by victimsfocused on physical appearance, followed by relationships andbehavior. Perpetrator narratives focused primarily on behavior,followed closely by body parts and appearance. Implications ofvictim/perpetrator differences regarding teasing and the conse-quences of teasing are discussed.

In the course of everyday life, people do a lot of meanand unpleasant things to one another. They embarrasseach other, betray one another, complain and nag, hurteach other’s feelings, make each other feel guilty, andinflict many other sorts of psychological distress. Collec-tively, behaviors such as these have been termed “aver-sive interpersonal behaviors” (Kowalski, 1997). One ofthe more enigmatic of these aversive interpersonalbehaviors is teasing. Although many people associateteasing with humor and joking, few of us are immune tothe biting, caustic, and hurtful nature of some teases.Ironically, no matter how threatening a tease is to therecipient, the teaser can always claim that he or she was“only kidding” and, by doing so, seemingly disavow him-self or herself of any responsibility for harmful effectsresulting from the tease. If, indeed, people are just kid-ding, then why do high school students list as their pri-mary fear the fear of being teased (Schaefer, 1978;Shapiro, Baumeister, & Kessler, 1991)? If teasing is all in

good fun, then why is there a relationship betweendepression in 13- to 15-year-old girls and their history ofbeing teased (Schaefer, 1978; Shapiro et al., 1991)? Theadage that “sticks and stones may break my bones butwords will never hurt me” may not be true after all.

Teasing is difficult to define and study because it is amultifaceted phenomenon—some aspects of whichhave very positive connotations and some aspects ofwhich have very negative connotations. These positiveand negative facets of teasing can be seen in the table ofcontents of a book on teasing that includes the followingtopics: flirting, gossiping, bullying, sarcasm, and sexualharassment (Feinberg, 1996). Because of its positive andnegative connotations, teasing can include benignattempts to joke with others and poke good-natured funor it can be used aggressively to hurt another person’sfeelings or to ostracize an individual from the group. Itcan lead to laughter and camaraderie or it can producetears and destroy relationships. Depending on the tar-get’s current mood and the reactions of others who hearthe tease, a particular taunt may be perceived as enjoy-able on one occasion but unpleasant on another (Win-frey, 1993).

The word tease has roots in the Anglo-Saxon taesan,meaning to tear to pieces, and the French attiser, mean-ing “to feed a fire with fuel” (Pawluk, 1989, p. 146; seealso Feinberg, 1996). More current uses define teasing as“a verbal thrust whose meaning goes beyond the wordsthat bear it. . . . The very essence of a tease is that its

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Author’s Note: The author would like to thank Thomas Britt, MarkLeary, Michelle McKenzie, and Elsie Howerton for their comments onan earlier version of this article. Thanks also are extended to Cindy Sny-der, Ann Simons, Ellen Houston, Rose Pritchett, and Bradley Lewis fortheir help with data collection. Correspondence may be addressed toRobin Kowalski, Department of Psychology, Western Carolina Univer-sity, Cullowhee, NC 28723; e-mail: [email protected].

PSPB, Vol. 26 No. 2, February 2000 231-241© 2000 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

meaning is always open to interpretation particularly bythe person on the receiving end” (Winfrey, 1993, p. 66).Similarly, Shapiro et al. (1991) suggest that teasinginvolves a combination of aggression, wit, and ambiguity.The Oxford English Dictionary (1993) defines teasing as a“mildly annoying, harassing, or irritating occurrencedone in sport or mischief.” Commonly used synonymsfor tease include annoy, badger, joke, josh, kid, belea-guer, belittle, clown around, harass, humiliate, rib, andridicule.

As suggested by these conceptualizations, part of theambiguity underlying teasing arises from the target’s dif-ficulty in understanding the motives of the person initi-ating the tease. Is the teaser just joking around or is he orshe attempting to ridicule or humiliate? When asked tolist the reasons why people teased, participants in onestudy (Watts, 1998) displayed considerable diversity inthe reasons they cited. Among the factors participantslisted for why people tease were “for fun,” “as a joke,” “tobe liked,” “to hurt others,” “to make others laugh,” “toaggravate and annoy others,” and “to make others feelinferior.” Given the contradictory nature of thesemotives, the difficulty that victims may have in interpret-ing a perpetrator’s motive for teasing is not hard tocomprehend.

Similarly, when asked why they thought other chil-dren teased, some children reported “because they wantto look cool” or because “it lets everyone know thatthey’ve got the power.” Still another child said, “Some-times when you see someone who looks different it’sscary. Like you might think the same thing could happento you. Teasing is like a magic shield for some kids”(BandAids and Blackboards, 1997). By teasing others whoare different, children can distance themselves fromfrightening stimuli.

In another examination of the motives stated by chil-dren who perpetrated teases, Shapiro et al. (1991) foundthat the most common causes were to get someone backfor teasing them, to play or joke around, to indicate thatthey disliked the target, or to make themselves feel betterwhen they were in a bad mood. Based on the results oftheir study, Shapiro et al. suggested that teasing was a wayof establishing social dominance, a means of promotingconformity within a group, and a mechanism to disguiseone’s true feelings and intentions.

Teasing can have both positive and negative effects onthe instigators and the targets of the tease. On the posi-tive side, teasing may be used to demonstrate camarade-rie and to strengthen social bonds with the target of thetease (Eder, 1991, 1993; Sharkey, 1992). On the negativeside, teasing may be a means of strengthening socialbonds with people other than the target by ostracizingthe 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 areteases labeled “good” or “acceptable” teases and whenare they labeled “bad” or “unacceptable” teases? Consis-tent with research on hurt feelings (Leary, Springer,Negel, Ansell, & Evans, 1998), teasing appears tobecome aversive when it is perceived to indicate rela-tional devaluation, that is, when it indicates to the targetthat the teaser “does not regard his or her relationshipwith the person to be as important, close, or valuable asthe person desires” (Leary et al., 1988, p. 1225). Accord-ing to Leary et al. (1998), who found teasing to be one ofthe seven primary elicitors of hurt feelings, “teasing maybe interpreted as veiled criticism, or as an indication thatthe perpetrator does not adequately value the victim orthe relationship” (p. 1233). The relational devaluationmay be unintentional on the part of the teaser but thefeelings of embarrassment, identity challenge, and insome instances, exclusion are enough to suggest its pres-ence to the target of the tease. Thus, teasing that impliesinterpersonal rejection and social exclusion (i.e., badteasing) is perceived very differently from teasing thatpromotes camaraderie and social inclusion (i.e., goodteasing).

Victims’ and Perpetrators’Perceptions of Teasing

If there were no ambiguity in the perceived motivesbehind teasing, and if teasing never involved relationaldevaluation, perpetrators and targets of teasing mightnot be expected to differ in their perceptions of a teasinginteraction. However, research on other aversive interac-tions, such as bullying (Besag, 1989; Ross, 1996), hurtfulexchanges (Leary et al., 1998), and interpersonal con-flict (Baumeister, Stillwell, & Wotman, 1990), suggeststhat victims and perpetrators frequently form very differ-ent perceptions of the interaction. Relative to victims,perpetrators minimize the negative impact of theirbehavior, view their behaviors more benignly, perceivethe behavior as motivated by rational motives, and seethe consequences of their behavior as more limited inscope. As with other aversive interpersonal behaviors,what is ultimately most important is how the tease is per-ceived by the victim (Kowalski, 1997). According to Win-frey (1993), “whether a tease turns out to be humorousor demeaning depends in part on how the targetreacts—or fails to react” (p. 66).

The frequency with which people tease and their reac-tions when teased may depend on the person’s earlyexperiences with teasing (Georgesen, Harris, Milich, &Bosko-Young, 1999). People who have had favorableexperiences with teasing in the past will likely respondpositively to other teasing encounters. On the other

232 PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN

hand, people who have been mercilessly teased or whohave been adversely affected by teases in the past willrespond more negatively.

Personality variables also moderate perceptions ofteasing behaviors (Georgesen et al., 1999). For example,Georgesen et al. found that people high in agreeable-ness evaluated a videotaped teasing interaction morefavorably than did people low in agreeableness. Partici-pants high in neuroticism evaluated the same video-taped encounter less favorably than did people low inneuroticism.

In addition, because of differences in the ways inwhich men and women are socialized, gender differ-ences in perceptions of teasing behavior would beexpected. Men and women have different styles of teas-ing (Winfrey, 1993). Consistent with their relational ori-entation, women’s teasing tends to be more playful andrelationship-enhancing, whereas men’s teasing isharsher and more likely to be relationship-demeaning(Eder, 1993).

Furthermore, the content of men’s and women’steases may be gender-specific, such that women areinclined to tease about more feminine issues and menabout more masculine issues. Indeed, Shapiro et al.(1991) found only one gender difference in children’sreports of teasing; specifically, girls were more likely thanboys to tease about physical appearance. Gender differ-ences in teasing also appear to depend on the age of theparticipants. Through the preschool years, boys and girlstease in much the same way. After preschool, however,boys’ teasing takes on a more insidious quality, relative togirls’ teases (Ross, 1996). Relative to women, men aresocialized to tease more frequently and to handle beingteased more effectively. Because of these differential pat-terns of socialization, men’s and women’s feelings aboutteasing someone else or about being the victim of teasingwould be expected to differ.

The present study was designed to examine differ-ences in victims’ and perpetrators’ accounts of teasingepisodes. Because of the ethical considerations involvedwith teasing participants in a laboratory setting, werelied on the use of autobiographical narratives. Theefficacy of this methodology has been demonstrated byBaumeister and his colleagues in their study of anger(Baumeister et al., 1990), masochism (Baumeister, 1988,1989), and guilt (Leith & Baumeister, 1998) and byLeary et al. (1998) in their study of hurt feelings.

In the present study, each participant was assigned towrite two autobiographical narratives, one thatdescribed an incident in which they were teased by some-one else and another in which they perpetrated thetease. Although it would be ideal to have both victim andperpetrator accounts of the same teasing episode, the

nature of this methodology prohibited reaching thisideal. Instead, it is important to note that each partici-pant assumed both a victim and a perpetrator role. Vic-tims and perpetrators were expected to have very differ-ent perceptions of teasing episodes, with victimsperceiving the episodes more negatively than did perpe-trators. Relative to victims, perpetrators were expectedto downplay the adverse effects of their teasing and tosee the situation as more humorous. Furthermore, thelong-term effects of teasing were hypothesized to bemore serious for victims than for perpetrators.

METHOD

Participants

Fifty female and 22 male undergraduate students par-ticipated in partial fulfillment of a course researchrequirement.1 The mean age of the participants was 22.4(range 18-44), and more than 96% of the individuals tak-ing part were Caucasian. Students participated in groupsranging in size from 10 to 30. To assure privacy, partici-pants did not interact with one another at any time dur-ing the session.

Procedure

After signing a consent form, each participant wasinstructed to write two narratives. The order in whichthe narratives were written was counterbalanced. In onenarrative, participants wrote about an event when theywere teased by someone else. The instructions were asfollows:

Please write a true story from your life about a time thatyou were teased. Nearly everyone has experienced beingteased on more than one occasion; please choose anespecially powerful and memorable experience of beingteased. Be as thorough and complete as you can and tellthe full story about the instance in which you wereteased.

The other narrative focused on an incident in whichthey teased another individual. The instructions for thisnarrative resembled those for the victim narrative inevery respect except that instead of writing about beingteased, 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 aquestionnaire examining their perceptions of the expe-rience. To examine participants’ views of the positive fea-tures of the teasing situation, they were asked to rate howhumorous they perceived the situation to be and thedegree to which they thought their self-esteem was raisedas a function of the teasing event. These questions were

Kowalski / TEASING 233

answered using 12-point scales with five scale labels (notat all, slightly, moderately, very, and extremely). Participantsalso indicated how positively they viewed the other indi-vidual and how positively they perceived they wereviewed by the other person. Responses were again madeusing 12-point scales with five scale labels (not at all posi-tively, somewhat positively, moderately positively, very positively,and extremely positively).

Because of the negative features that some peopleassign to teasing incidents, a second set of questionsexamined participants’ perceptions of the negative fea-tures of the incident recounted. Specifically, participantsindicated 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 theteasing encounter, how annoyed they felt, and how guiltythey felt. Participants responded to each of these itemsusing 12-point scales with five scale labels (not at all toextremely).

A third set of questions examined participants’ priorexperience with teasing. They also were asked how fre-quently they were teased by others and how frequentlythey teased other people. Twelve-point scales with fivescale labels (not at all to extremely) were again used.

RESULTS

Content Analyses of Narratives

All narratives, both victim and perpetrator, were con-tent analyzed along two dimensions: content of the teaseand the relationship between the victim and perpetrator.To assess interrater reliability, two raters independentlycoded the narratives. Interrater reliability for both con-tent and relationship exceeded .80.

After reading all of the teasing narratives, seven cate-gories were derived to classify the content of all of theteases: relationships (e.g., teasing or being teased aboutthe absence of a relationship, one’s partner and his orher characteristics, sexual behaviors), body parts/appearance, behavior (e.g., walking, dancing, clumsi-ness), intelligence, medical conditions, stereotyping/social group (e.g., age, ethnicity), and other (e.g.,name). Each of the narratives was then read again andclassified using this coding scheme. Each narrative wascoded as belonging to only one content category.

Victims. Consistent with research on children’s teasing(Shapiro et al., 1991), more than 45% of the victim nar-ratives focused on physical appearance (e.g., being fat,having a large nose), followed by relationships (11.2%)and behavior (11.2%). For example, one individualwrote,

When I was young and even in middle school I recall peo-ple picking on me about my nose. They would call me

“banana nose” and “Pinocchio” and ask if they couldslide down my nose sometime. Ridiculous stuff, but I wasvery insecure and it killed me. I would go home or in thebathroom at school and cry and cry. It was miserable.

A breakdown of the content of the teases by type ofnarrative and gender is provided in Table 1. A chi-squareanalysis by gender conducted on the content areasrevealed a significant gender difference, χ2(6) = 15.01,p < .02. For women, by far the largest percentage of teasesdealt with body parts/appearance (52%). Men also wereteased frequently about their appearance (27.3%) butwere teased equally often about their relationships(27.3%).

The relationship between the teasing victim and per-petrator was coded as falling within one of four catego-ries: romantic partners, friends, schoolmates, and rela-tives. As shown in Table 2, in more than half of theteasing episodes recounted by victims, the victim andperpetrator were schoolmates (55.7%). The teasing epi-sodes recounted by male and female victims did not dif-fer significantly in the relationship between victim andperpetrator, χ2(3) = 1.77, p > .62. Both male and femalevictims were teased most frequently by schoolmates.


TABLE 1: Percentages of Teases Falling Within Each ContentCategory

Victim Perpetrator

Content Male Female Overall Male Female Overall

Relationships 27.3 4.0 11.2 27.3 12.0 16.7Appearance 27.3 52.0 45.1 9.1 30.0 23.6Behavior 13.6 10.0 11.2 27.3 32.0 30.6Intelligence 4.5 10.0 8.5 4.5 12.0 9.7Medicalconditions 0.0 10.0 7.0 9.1 4.0 5.6

Stereotyping/social group 9.1 2.0 4.2 9.1 4.0 5.6

Other 18.2 10.0 12.7 13.6 6.0 8.3

TABLE 2: Percentages of Teases Falling Within Each Relation-ship Category

Victim Perpetrator

Relationship Male Female Overall Male Female Overall

Romanticpartner 0.0 4.1 2.9 10.0 17.0 14.9

Schoolmates 57.1 55.1 55.7 20.0 25.5 23.9Friends 33.3 24.4 27.2 65.0 31.9 34.3Relatives 9.5 16.3 14.3 5.0 36.2 26.9

Perpetrators. The seven categories used to content ana-lyze the victim narratives also were used for the perpetra-tor narratives. As shown in Table 1, the largest percent-ages of teases dealt with behavior (30.6%), followedclosely by body parts/appearance (23.6%). The teasingepisodes of male and female perpetrators did not differsignificantly in the type of tease instigated, χ2(3) = 9.53,p > .14.

In general, the narratives in which participantsreported teasing another individual involved peoplewith whom the individual was either a friend (34.3%) ora relative (26.9%). When examined by gender, however,this overall pattern changes, χ2(3) = 13.53 p < .003. Formen, the relationship between the victim and perpetra-tor was usually a friendship (65.0%), followed by school-mates (20.0%). Women, on the other hand, were morelikely to tease relatives (36.2%) than schoolmates(25.5%) or friends (31.9%).

Linguistic Analysis

A text analysis was conducted on each of the partici-pants’ teasing narratives using the Linguistic Inquiryand Word Count strategy (LIWC) (Francis & Penne-baker, 1994). This computer software analyzes the affec-tive, cognitive, and structural elements of written text ona word-by-word basis. Sixty-one output variables are pro-

duced, some of which reflect structural elements of thewriting (e.g., word count, exclamation marks) and someof which are grouped into composite variables reflectingnegative emotionality, positive emotionality, cognitivemechanisms, self-references, other references, andnegations. In addition to the structural elements of wordcount and proportion of exclamation marks used, wewere interested in this study in the composite variables ofnegative emotionality, positive emotionality, self-references, and other references.

The negative emotionality profile is calculated basedon words such as angry, ashamed, and worthless. Positiveemotionality, on the other hand, reflects words such asexcitement, peace, and security. Split-plot analyses of vari-ance with sex (male/female) as the between-participants factor and role (victim/perpetrator) as thewithin-participants factor were conducted on these com-posite variables. A main effect of role was obtained onthe negative emotionality variable, F(1, 70) = 5.34, p <.02. Interestingly, participants’ narratives reflected morenegative emotionality when they wrote about teasinganother person as opposed to being teased. Part of thismay reflect the remorse and guilt that many participantsreported when they wrote about teasing others. No sig-nificant effects were obtained with the positive emotion-ality variable (see Table 3).

Analyses of the number of references to self and otherrevealed that participants used more self-referenceswhen they wrote about being teased compared to teasinganother, F(1, 70) = 15.28, p < .001. Conversely, more ref-erences to other were used when writing about teasinganother than when writing about being teased, F(1, 70) =47.72, p < .001. (Means are reported in Table 3.) How-ever, this effect was moderated by the gender of the par-ticipant, F(1, 70) = 12.22, p < .001. In the narratives inwhich participants described episodes where they wereteased by others, men (M = 5.1, SD = 4.6) used signifi-cantly more other references than did women (M = 2.4,SD = 2.5). In addition, women used more other refer-ences when their narratives concerned teasing others(M = 8.8, SD = 3.9) than when they focused on beingteased (M = 2.4, SD = 2.5), ps < .05.

From a structural perspective, participants used sig-nificantly more words when writing about being teasedthan about teasing, F(1, 70) = 6.90, p < .01. The propor-tion of exclamation marks used also was greater in narra-tives 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 asthe between-participants factor and role as the within-participants factor were conducted on the remainingdependent variable measures. Overall, participants felt


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

Item Victim Perpetrator

How negatively did you feel about theexperience? 9.1 (3.3) 4.9 (3.5)

How negatively do you think the otherperson felt? 2.9 (2.8) 8.3 (4.0)

To what degree was your self-esteemraised? 2.1a (2.3) 3.3a (3.1)

To what degree was your self-esteemlowered? 7.5 (4.1) 3.1 (2.8)

How annoyed were you by theexperience? 10.0 (3.1) 3.6 (3.3)

How guilty did you feel about theexperience? 2.6 (2.8) 5.5 (3.8)

How humorous did you perceivethe experience to be? 2.8 (3.2) 7.2 (3.7)

How positively do you view the otherindividual involved? 4.8 (3.6) 7.4 (3.9)

How positively do you think theindividual views you? 5.8 (3.5) 7.1 (3.7)

Negative emotionality (LIWC) 3.5 (2.5) 4.5 (3.4)Positive emotionality (LIWC) 2.2a (1.7) 2.1a (1.8)References to self (LIWC) 11.3 (2.6) 8.8 (3.9)References to other (LIWC) 3.3 (3.4) 8.3 (3.7)Total word count (LIWC) 103.7 (57.5) 87.6 (42.5)Exclamation marks (LIWC) .41 (1.3) .12 (.47)

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

more negatively about the experience when they werethe victim of a tease than when they perpetrated thetease, F(1, 69) = 47.63, p < .001. (Means for the role maineffect are reported in Table 3.) A main effect of genderobtained on negativity ratings revealed that men (M =5.8, SD = 3.6) felt less negatively about the experiencethan did women (M = 7.6, SD = 3.3), F(1, 69) = 7.20, p < .01.

The analysis of the question that asked how partici-pants perceived the other person felt as a result of theteasing incident revealed a main effect of role, F(1, 68) =77.04, p < .001. Relative to victims, who perceived that theperpetrators felt mildly negative about the teasing event,perpetrators rated victims as feeling very negative aboutthe experience.

Two items examined the influence of the experienceon participants’ self-esteem. One question assessed thedegree to which the experience raised participants’ self-esteem and the other assessed the degree to which theexperience lowered self-esteem. The analysis of the self-esteem enhancing effects of the experience revealed aninteraction of sex and role, F(1, 69) = 6.03, p < .02. Whenrecounting an event in which they were teased, men (M =3.3, SD = 3.1) reported that their self-esteem was raisedmore than was reported by women (M = 1.6, SD = 1.6).However, women reported that their self-esteem wasraised 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, partici-pants reported their self-esteem to be only slightlyaffected in the positive direction by the experience.

The negative effects of teasing on self-esteem weremore pronounced. First, women’s (M = 5.8, SD = 3.4)self-esteem was lowered more than men’s (M = 4.4, SD =3.5), F(1, 69) = 4.32, p < .04. In addition, as shown inTable 3, victims of teasing reported more detrimentaleffects on their self-esteem than were reported by perpe-trators, F(1, 69) = 38.07, p < .001.

Main effects of role also were obtained on questionsexamining how annoyed participants were by the experi-ence, F(1, 69) = 146.48, p < .001, how much guilt they felt,F(1, 69) = 15.15, p < .001, and how humorous they foundthe experience to be, F(1, 69) = 48.01, p < .001. Partici-pants were more annoyed when they were the victim asopposed to the perpetrator. On the other hand,although participants not surprisingly reported findingthe experience more humorous when they perpetratedthe tease than when they were teased, they also experi-enced more guilt as the perpetrator than as the victim(see Table 3).

The role main effect obtained on how guilty partici-pants felt about the experience was qualified by an inter-action of sex and role, F(1, 69) = 9.72, p < .003. Whereasmen’s reports of the amount of guilt experienced didnot 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 whenthey initiated the tease (M = 6.0, SD = 3.7) than when theywere the victim (M = 2.2, SD = 2.1), ps < .05.

Main effects of role also were obtained on ratings ofhow positively participants viewed the other individual,F(1, 69) = 12.95, p < .001, and how positively they thoughtthe other individual viewed them, F(1, 69) = 4.94, p < .03.As would be expected, perpetrators viewed the targetsmore favorably than victims viewed perpetrators. On theother hand, perpetrators perceived that they wereviewed more favorably by victims than victims thoughtthey were viewed by perpetrators (see Table 3).

Intercorrelations between these post-narrative ques-tions and the composites created by the LIWC strategycan be found in Table 4 for victims’ responses and inTable 5 for perpetrators’ responses. Although most ofthese correlations were nonsignificant, a few are worthyof note. Perpetrators who felt guilty about teasing some-one else used fewer self-references in their narratives (r =–.27). By contrast, the more humorous they perceivedthe incident to be, the more self-references theyemployed (r = .27). Victims used fewer words in theirnarrative the more negatively they felt about beingteased (r = –.28). In addition, victims who reported thatthe teasing incident had positive effects on their self-esteem wrote longer narratives (r = .27) and used moreother references in these narratives (r = .27).

Two additional questionnaire items examined the fre-quency with which participants reported being teasedand the frequency with which they reported teasing oth-ers. An ANOVA by gender conducted separately onthese two items revealed no significant differencesbetween men and women in their perceptions of the fre-quency 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 occasion-ally. However, men (M = 5.5, SD = 2.7) reported teasingothers 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 people’sbehavior immediately highlights individual differencesin perceptions of teasing behavior. Whereas some peo-ple enjoy a good laugh when they are teased, others feelhumiliated, rejected, and excluded. In addition,whereas some people rarely tease, others could belabeled chronic teasers. Even for a single individual,situational variables can alter both the likelihood of teas-ing someone else as well as the reaction generated inresponse to a tease. Given the variability in perceptionsof teasing, the present study tested the hypothesis that


victims and perpetrators would have different percep-tions of teasing encounters.

Consistent with predictions and with previousresearch, victims and perpetrators perceived teasing epi-sodes differently. Relative to victims, perpetrators notsurprisingly perceived the incident to be more humor-ous. In addition, whereas perpetrators did not perceivethe teasing encounters to be particularly annoying, vic-tims reported being very annoyed by them. Perpetratorsalso reported higher feelings of guilt relative to victims.Perhaps reflecting these feelings of guilt, recollections ofepisodes in which the participant perpetrated the teasecontained more negative emotionality than did victimaccounts.

Victim/perpetrator differences also were obtainedon the variables that examined how they viewed theother individual and how they thought the other individ-ual viewed them. Victims perceived that they wereviewed less positively than perpetrators said they viewedthem. Perpetrators, on the other hand, thought they

were viewed more favorably than victims actually per-ceived them. Four explanations may account for this.First, victims may have misinterpreted the motives of theperpetrator and viewed the tease as more malevolentthan was the case. Thus, although the perpetrator’sintent was to have fun with the target, the target per-ceived that the perpetrator was trying to hurt him or herand thus inferred that he or she did not like the target. Inother words, they perceived the perpetrator’s behaviorto indicate relational devaluation (Leary et al., 1998).The target may wonder why else beyond personal dislikeanother person would have been so cruel. Given thatpeople have a tendency to assume the worst about howthey are viewed by others (Goffman, 1959), such misun-derstandings between victims and perpetrators areunderstandable. Second, perpetrators may have teasedbecause they disliked some aspect of the target but wereunwilling to admit so in the experiment. Third, even ifperpetrators actually viewed the target negatively at thetime of the incident, the passage of time and personal


TABLE 4: Intercorrelations of LIWC Categories and Victim Post-Narrative Questions

Word Exclamation Negative Positive Self- OtherCount Marks Emotionality Emotionality References References

How negatively did you feel about the experience? –.28* –.19 .03 –.08 .14 –.11How negatively do you think the other person felt? –.02 .04 .01 –.11 –.12 .31**To what degree was your self-esteem raised? .27* .11 .01 .11 –.12 .27*To what degree was your self-esteem lowered? –.17 –.22 .06 –.09 .06 –.17How annoyed were you by the experience? –.13 –.05 –.09 –.09 .08 –.04How guilty did you feel about the experience? .07 .05 .17 –.09 .04 .16How humorous did you perceive the experience to be? .10 .30* .08 –.16 –.09 .15How positively do you view the other individual involved? .16 .01 –.005 –.03 –.13 .12How positively do you think the individual views you? .27* –.02 –.07 .11 –.005 .008

NOTE: LIWC = Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count.*p < .05. **p < .01.

TABLE 5: Intercorrelations of LIWC Categories and Perpetrator Post-Narrative Questions

Word Exclamation Negative Positive Self- OtherCount Marks Emotionality Emotionality References References

How negatively did you feel about the experience? –.04 –.21 –.16 –.06 –.13 .13How negatively do you think the other person felt? .005 –.17 .06 .19 .03 .13To what degree was your self–esteem raised? .26* .07 .10 .06 .12 –.22To what degree was your self–esteem lowered? –.17 –.12 –.13 –.12 –.12 .04How annoyed were you by the experience? .05 –.01 –.19 –.08 –.16 .01How guilty did you feel about the experience? –.08 .07 .05 –.16 –.27* .02How humorous did you perceive the experience to be? –.11 .21 .22 –.08 .27* .06How positively do you view the other individual involved? .007 .11 .10 –.08 .09 .06How positively do you think the individual views you? .26* .06 –.07 .15 .04 .01

NOTE: LIWC = Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count.*p < .05. **p < .01.

feelings of guilt may have led them to regard the targetmore favorably. Fourth, victims’ negative evaluations ofperpetrators may have become more negative with thepassage of time. The content of some of the narratives,particularly those written by victims, suggested thatmany of the victims had ruminated about the teasingincident since its initial occurrence. These ruminationsmight have magnified the event in the victim’s mind,thereby enhancing negative feelings that he or she hadabout the incident and the individual who perpetratedit. Indeed, research has shown that mental ruminationabout negative events increases and prolongs negativeaffect associated with the event (Morrow & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1990; Nolen-Hoeksema, 1987).

Given how they thought they were perceived by theother individual, victims and perpetrators not surpris-ingly differed in the effects of the teasing incident ontheir self-esteem. Victims reported more negative effectson their self-esteem than did perpetrators. Teasing maybe aversive because it is threatening to the self (Alberts,Kellar-Guenther, & Corman, 1996). Teasers characterizethe victim in negative ways and often impose an identityon the victim that is inconsistent with his or her self-perception. If the tease is perceived by the victim as anindication that the perpetrator does not adequatelyvalue his or her relationship with the victim, then the vic-tim’s self-esteem is likely to be affected (Leary et al.,1998). In some cases, the victim may internalize thenegative characterization and come to view himself orherself less positively than before.

Also of note is the finding that perpetrators were wellaware of the negative effects of their teasing. In responseto the question asking victims and perpetrators how theythought the other person felt as a result of the teasingencounter, victims rated perpetrators as feeling mildlynegative about the incident, whereas perpetrators ratedvictims as feeling very negatively about being teased. Per-petrators’ knowledge of the negative feelings induced bythe teasing may have facilitated the feelings of guilt thatperpetrators reported.

Content of Teases

The overwhelming majority of the victim narrativesand a notable percentage of the perpetrator narrativesfocused on body parts and physical appearance. Severalreasons may account for the predominance ofappearance-related teasing. Because physical appear-ance represents a readily observable feature, it is an easytarget for teasing. Physical appearance is also a primaryfactor influencing perceptions of social approval andacceptance.2 For a perpetrator who desires to hurt his orher victim, a key means of doing this is to imply, throughteasing about appearance, that the person is not sociallyacceptable. Furthermore, those who tease for malevo-

lent reasons may choose to tease about another’s bodyparts or physical appearance because of the target’sinability to control many of these features. Relatedly,negative evaluations of one’s appearance as opposed toother dimensions of the self, such as scholastic aptitude,are more predictive of global self-evaluations (Harter,1993; Kowalski, 1998). Thus, “bad” teases aboutanother’s physical appearance are particularly likely toinduce hurt feelings and negative self-evaluations, mak-ing them particularly salient to victims. In addition,because people who are physically attractive are per-ceived as more sociable, intelligent, psychologicallyadjusted, and socially skilled (Feingold, 1992), teasesabout appearance perhaps more than any other type oftease may be used by perpetrators to convey dislike, rela-tional devaluation, and social exclusion.

Gender differences that were observed in relation tothe content categories (e.g., women reporting moreappearance-related teasing relative to men), althoughconsistent with what one might expect, should be inter-preted cautiously. These differences may reflect discrep-ancies between men and women in the salience of par-ticular types of teases rather than the frequency withwhich those teases are actually perpetrated. For exam-ple, men and women may be teased equally aboutaspects of their appearance. However, when being askedto retrospectively recall episodes of teasing, those relatedto appearance may be more salient to women than tomen, in large part because of society’s emphasis onwomen’s physical appearance. Interestingly, womenwere more likely than men to perpetrate teases aboutphysical appearance. People may tease about thosethings about which they are sensitive because theyassume that others will be sensitive about those topics aswell.

The topics about which men and women were teasedmay shed some light on the fact that teasing had agreater effect on women’s self-esteem relative to men’s.As noted earlier, relative to relationships, about whichmen were teased most frequently, people have less con-trol over their body parts and their physical appearance,about which women were teased most frequently.Because of the less changeable nature of the content ofthe tease, women may be more adversely affected by teas-ing than are men. In addition, due to socialization,aspects of appearance are perhaps more central to awoman’s identity than relationships are to a man’s.Women’s self-ratings of attractiveness and self-esteemare highly correlated, which suggests that they may beparticularly susceptible to negative evaluations ofappearance. For men, on the other hand, the relation-ship between physical attractiveness and self-esteem isless strong (Harter, 1993).


Relationship BetweenVictim and Perpetrator

All of the teasing incidents involved victims and per-petrators who were acquainted with one another. Not asingle narrative involved an individual being teased by astranger or teasing a stranger. One reason for this is thatteases, whether motivated by benevolent or malevolentconcerns, miss their mark with strangers. The ambiguitythat characterizes a tease is very difficult to achieve whenthe perpetrator and target do not know one another.Imagine jokingly commenting on a stranger’s Pinocchionose. The consequences of such an encounter wouldmore than likely be very undesired. In addition, becausewe have more information about those with whom weare close, we have more ammunition that can be usedagainst them, even in a “joking” manner (Miller, 1997).We are also less likely to inhibit our teasing commentswith close others, knowing that, even if they areoffended, they will recover from any negative effects ofthe tease and the relationship will continue as before.Teasing or being teased by close friends or relatives pre-sents something of a paradox. On one hand, because theperson is close to us, he or she is allowed more liberty inteasing than acquaintances would be. On the otherhand, because they are close to us, they should knowwhich topics are sensitive ones and, therefore, shouldnot be the basis of teasing.

Consequences of Teasing

The long-term, primarily negative impact of the teas-ing incident on the victims was clear in victims’ ratings aswell as in the narratives themselves. Many of the victimswrote about the teasing incident as being something thatthey will never forget or as an event that they “vividlyremember.” Many of them also mentioned specificallyhow hurtful the teasing was. One individual, in describ-ing how her brother used to tease her about her hair (hetold her that she looked like she was wearing a perma-nent football helmet), stated that “it does not sound likemuch but the teasing was a constant occurrence and Istill have bad feelings about it.” Statements such as thisconvey victims’ feelings that teasers do not value them ortheir relationship. This perception is reflected by a nar-rative statement made by an individual whose feelingshad been hurt by being teased, “Why . . . would he saysuch a thing if he cared about our friendship” (Leary et al.,1998, p. 1234).

Similar long-term residual effects of teasing werereported by Cash (1995) in his research on appearance-related teasing. Of the women he surveyed, 70% indi-cated that they sometimes or often thought about theexperience. Other research has found a relationshipbetween appearance-related teasing and subsequentbody 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 alsocould be interpreted as indicative of the degree of hurtstill experienced by the victims. Relative to perpetrators,victims’ narratives were longer and used more first-person references. Relative to perpetrators, victims mayhold more vivid and more detailed memories of teasingencounters, a factor that would be expected if one hadbeen hurt by a particular interaction. Thus, the victimshad more information to convey in their narratives.

Perhaps more surprising than the long-term effects ofteasing on the victims were the negative effectsrecounted by perpetrators. After thinking back on theinstances in which they teased someone else, many per-petrators reported feeling guilty or wondering what hap-pened to the person that they teased. One participantwrote about how she and her middle-school classmatesfrequently teased a boy who smelled bad. She stated that“to this day I have not apologized to him and I havewanted to. I never really wanted to tease him but it was agroup thing that everyone did. I regret it happened.”Another individual described a situation when she andher fifth-grade friends mercilessly teased another childfor being overweight. She stated, “When I look back, Ifeel guilty. She moved during or after fifth grade. Ihaven’t seen her since. I hope she’s tall, beautiful, andreally successful.” Other perpetrators reported feelingembarrassed when they were confronted even years laterwith teases that they perpetrated. The inverse relation-ship between perpetrators’ use of first-person referencesin their narratives and their self-reports of guilt mayreflect attempts to distance themselves from their per-sonal involvement in the teasing incident.

Many of the victim/perpetrator findings from thisstudy parallel those of other studies in finding that vic-tims not surprisingly view the experience more nega-tively than do perpetrators. However, whereas Baumeis-ter et al.’s (1990) study of victim and perpetratoraccounts of anger episodes found that about half of theperpetrators perceived their anger as justifiable and thenegative consequences to be minimal, rarely did perpe-trators in the present study deny that their teasing hadany negative effects. Although some perpetratorsappeared to take a neutral stance on the adverse effectsof their teasing, many were more forthcoming about theguilt that they felt and about the harm that they may havecaused the target. Two reasons may account for thisvariation across studies. Many of the episodes recountedoccurred during middle and high school. Thus, matura-tion alone may account for some awareness on the partof perpetrators regarding the negative effects of theirteasing. In addition, unlike anger or conflict, teasing is


almost never justified. The victim of teasing rarely if everdeserves to be teased. Thus, whereas perpetrators canmore easily justify anger or conflict, they may have moredifficulty discounting hurting another.

Limitations

In spite of the inroads that this article makes into arelatively uncharted area, certain limitations need to beacknowledged. The methodology relies on narrativeaccounts of teasing episodes that were “especially power-ful and memorable.” Teases that are memorable arethose that have left their mark on the individualsinvolved, often by hurting the victims’ feelings. Thus, wecannot be sure that the results presented here will gener-alize to recollections of more mundane teasing episodes.

In making comparisons between victim and perpetra-tor narratives, it is important to note that the narrativesin which an individual teased and those in which theywere teased reflect different events. This leaves open thepossibility that the victim and perpetrator narratives arequalitatively different from one another, thereby under-mining any conclusions that might be drawn. However,based on our review of the narratives, we believe that theevents recounted in the victim and perpetrator narra-tives are qualitatively similar.

In addition, the unwillingness of some men to partici-pate in the study leads to the question of whether thosewho did participate represent a different group of indi-viduals from those who chose not to be included.Descriptive statistics showing approximately equal vari-ances for the male and female participants suggestedthat this was not the case.

The gender effects examined in this study were basedsolely on the gender of the participants. Thus, we do nothave information related to the frequency with whichmen and women were teased by members of each gen-der. This will be an important area of investigation forfuture research.

Conclusion

Everyone has been teased and has teased someoneelse at least once in their life. Although many of theseteases are meant in good fun and are expressed in aneffort to convey camaraderie, victims do not always viewthe teases in this way. Rather, victims frequently perceiveteases as hurtful. From the victim’s perspective, the teasemay have conveyed that the perpetrator did not valuehim or her or their relationship. The tease may have con-veyed to the victim that he or she was an unlikable per-son. As noted by Leary et al. (1998), people who are thevictims of teasing may wonder how someone who caredabout them could say or do such cruel things. By examin-ing differences in victims’ and perpetrators’ perceptionsof teasing as well as the content of these teases, this study

supports existing research on victim/perpetrator differ-ences in relation to behaviors other than teasing andcontributes to a developing area within psychology.

NOTES

1. Female participants far outnumbered male participants in thepresent study, with more than twice as many women as men participat-ing. Although there were more female participants than male partici-pants available, the discrepancy was due more to an unwillingness onthe part of men to participate. Men displayed considerable reluctanceto write about episodes of teasing, many of them jokingly making com-ments that they would be embarrassed to write about their teasingencounters.

2. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

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Received August 11, 1998Revision accepted November 11, 1998


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