Dan Olweus:  Scandanavian scholar and the ‘founding father’ of research on schoolyard bullying.  His core program is based on a long-term research project which began in Sweden in 1970.   This project is generally regarded as the first scientific study of bullying. This research informed the subsequent “Bullying Prevention Program” which he began in the 1980’s.  This violence prevention initiative, which rejects bullying as ‘normal’, is one of 10 model programs selected by the US Department of Justice to be used to in an anti-violence initiative.                                                         

Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do (Understanding Children's Worlds)

Aggression in the Schools:  Bullies & Whipping Boys

Bullying Prevention Program (Blueprints for violence prevention)

Roy Baumeister:  Eminent social psychologist known for his work on the self, self-esteem, and belonging.  Social belonging has long been linked to psychic health.  Baumeister  takes this one step further, positing a ‘belongingness need’ which is on a par with any other human need.  In this view, our desire for interpersonal attachment is fundamental to any understanding of human motivation.  Support for this hypothesis is suggested by the nature of human dissatifaaction.  Baumeister  asserts that “a great deal of neurotic, maladaptive, and destructive behavior seems to reflect either desperate attempts to establish or maintain relationships with other people or sheer frustration and purposelessness when one’s need to belong goes unmet”